


Curving Away From Entropy

by catwalksalone



Series: Beyond the Gulag [6]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Arrowverse canonical physical abuse, Character Death Fix, DC science, Developing Relationship, Domestic Violence, Fix-It, Friendship, M/M, Not Season/Series 02 Compliant, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, Post-Season/Series 01, Road Trips, The Flash Season 1 spoilers, Time Travel, alternative ending, mild vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-04 20:20:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13372344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catwalksalone/pseuds/catwalksalone
Summary: "What if I told you we could get him back?" He paused. "I mean, probably. Probably get him back."All the king's horses and all the king's men are no match for the dream team of Ray and Mick who embark on a trip through Leonard's past to put him back together again, finding more than they bargained for along the way.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Finally, the last part of this series! Very sorry if anyone's been waiting, and very delighted to have it all done at last. It...kind of got away from me. This part occurs immediately after Rip took Mick to see Leonard in the bar in 2013, ep 116. It ignores any new information/retcons from S2 and 3, specifically the change in Ray's apparent background.
> 
> This fic is complete at 38000+ words, but will be posted in 5 parts for those who don't like to read too much in one go! (tags and rating apply to the whole fic, not just this part) Many, _many_ thanks to soupytwist for her hand-holding, cheerleading and beta. There is no way this would ever have got finished without her.

Ray stood outside the closed doors to the galley, a small box in his hands. Was this the right time? Mick had been through a lot lately, but then so had Ray. It had taken all his self-control not to follow Mick into that bar and see that familiar sneer one more time. If not now, though, when? If Ray was right and they were going to do this thing, then they were going to have to take their chances. Okay. Best foot forward. Ray blew out a sharp breath, squared his shoulders, and took a step toward the doors.

Inside, Mick sat slumped on a stool, elbows resting on the counter in front of him. Ray came around the other side, setting the white box down and untucking the folded lid. He plucked a cupcake from its holder and placed it on the counter in front of Mick, giving it a little spin for added flourish. He waited. 

"Not now, Haircut." Mick kept his gaze firmly on the almost empty bottle of Scotch clenched in one fist.

Ray considered grabbing Mick's wrist, but thought better of it; he was fond of all his limbs, after all. "What if I told you we could get him back?" He paused. "I mean, probably. Probably get him back."

Mick's head jerked up and Ray pretended not to notice his reddened eyes, narrow and unfocused. "I'm listening."

"Consider this cupcake."

"Do I have to?"

"It'll help this along, trust me."

"Okay." Mick refocused his intense gaze on the baked goods in front of him.

Ray squared his shoulders. "This is a working theory," he said. "We'll have our work cut out, but…" He clenched his fists, fighting against the rising race of his heartbeat. "There's a high possibility that he's not actually dead."

"We saw the explosion. No way anyone survived that." Mick sounded tired. Too tired even to haul Ray across the room and pin him by his neck, which is pretty much what Ray had bargained on at this point. Ray had to fight the sudden urge to bearhug the crap out of the guy, an action that would probably invite a reaction way worse than minor bruising to the throat. 

"You would think that," said Ray, adding an extra ten percent of pep to his tone to compensate for Mick's distinct lack of it. "And in 99.9% of cases you would be right. But this was no ordinary explosion; it was a time explosion. As I'm sure your alter ego Chronos knows, time isn't linear. Everything is always happening. Consider the Oculus to be the focal point of time. Time with a capital T. Everything swirls out from that point, past, present, future, like the swirls in this frosting. Follow any one swirl and you could wind up anywhere. But we also know that there are times that resist change. Times that want to happen no matter what. These are the sprinkles. They're anchors, if you will."

"Like Salvation?"

"No, not Fragmentations. Those are-" Ray waved his hand in the air in the universal gesture of _who the fuck knows?_ "Weird. This is different. It's like whatever Rip did he couldn't save his family. They died no matter what. So, my theory is that anchors can be personal as well as global. Visiting Snart in 2013 gave me the idea. What if he didn't die? What if he was stripped through time? What if he's gone hurtling through the time stream until he finds his own anchors and uses them to hold on?"

Mick looked up and stared hard at Ray. "That's a whole lot of what ifs."

"I know I'm right," said Ray, bouncing on his toes. "I _feel_ it. We have to find him and put him back together."

"Oh yeah? How does that work? Like Frankenstein?"

"No, no. Not that. He won't be in literal parts. Think quantum."

"Do I have to?"

"I mean, I could think it for you? That's the point of me. Your job is to figure out where those anchors are. No one knows Snart as well as you do."

Mick glanced at the bottle in his hand and then at the cupcake. "What the hell, I'm in." He banged the Scotch on the counter, letting go and snatching up the cupcake instead. "This thing better have real sugar," he growled.

"Full fat, full sugar, Scout's honor," said Ray, grinning. "I told you this was what Leonard would have wanted, and now I see why. Partner."

"Say that again and I'll wring your neck."

"Mmhmm." Ray wasn't even listening, he was already halfway through reasoning out the next problem.

"Whadda we do first?" asked Mick, accompanying the question with a spray of crumbs.

"You remember how to fly this ship?"

Mick nodded.

"Good, I was kind of relying on Chronos still being in there somewhere. So first, we need to get rid of our Captain. You heard what he said to Sara about Laurel. We can't risk him stopping us."

"Point. So what do we do?"

Ray frowned. Hunter was hard to separate from his ship at the best of times. Right now he was effecting repairs on some of the issues shaken loose by nearly flying into the heart of the sun.

"We could always knock him out."

"Somehow I don't see Gideon agreeing to keep him under while we go about our business, but let's call that Plan B."

"All right then, Robocop, what do you suggest?"

"Hmmm." Ray's lips twisted as he rapid-cycled through ideas, leaping from connection to connection and dismissing them all as unlikely to impossible. He closed his eyes and thought of time travel: H. G. Wells, the Doctor, the unbounded ridiculousness of the real thing where it seemed that almost anything went as long as you didn't do more than squint sideways at it and oh-!

He opened his eyes and intoned, "Strange things are afoot at the Circle K."

Mick scowled. "English."

Ray bounced on his toes again, unable to keep still. They were really going to do this thing. They were going to get Leonard back. "Let's Bill and Ted it," he said. "We can do that, right? When we're done we can come back and set up a diversion outside the ship so he has to go investigate. Once he's out of here you take the helm and fly us right into the Temporal Zone. We'll come back to this exact point and he won't know we've even been gone."

"I like the way you think. But what diversion will we cause?"

"I don't know, but that's future us's problem. Isn't it great?"

"You're an idiot."

"But I'm all you've got. For now."

Just then the ship shook violently as they heard a large explosion. Mick shot out a hand to save the Scotch bottle from falling. They stared at each other.

Gideon's voice floated about them. "Doctor Palmer and Mr. Rory, Captain Hunter has requested that you stay aboard while he checks the source of the explosion. Something about the integrity of the time stream. Or at least I think that's what he was muttering."

"Thanks, Gideon," said Ray, giving a thumbs up and a wink to Mick.

"You look demented. Now come on, we don't have much time."

***

They sat side by side in Ray's lab. Taking the ship into the Temporal Zone had been the easy part; convincing Gideon to let them stay there had been harder. But it seemed she'd had a soft spot for Snart and she had let herself be persuaded into being part of the rescue team. It wasn't going to be easy without the timestream data, but she had been encouraging about the possibility of getting it done.

Ray had been working on his detector and containment unit for a solid week now. Sometimes Mick was with him, helping in any way he could, and other times he was absent, doing whatever it was someone like Mick did when they were bored out of their skull. He smelled sober, at least. Ray himself had barely moved from his position by the bench, shifting only for new parts or a better angle. He hadn't shaved, had eaten what Mick shoved under his nose without resistance but without interest, and hadn't caught more than a few hours sleep since he'd started. He'd even moved the Atom suit out of the room to make way for a board that was scrawled on in every direction with equations. When he'd run out of room there, he'd written on his arms. But it was worth it: he was nearly there.

"Not that I don't appreciate the effort," said Mick, sliding a plate with something on it that Ray shoved into his mouth without looking, "but what's in this for you?"  
"Huh?" Ray put down the calibrator he was fine-tuning, and turned to look at Mick.

"This some sort of pathetic attempt to get Kendra back from her hawk's nest? Be the hero, rescue the baddy, get the girl?"

"He's not-" Ray started, and then snapped his mouth shut, scratching at a sudden itch at the base of his skull. He hadn't even given his ex-fiancee a second thought for days. How had he let her go so easily? Did that make him a decent human being for putting her needs before his own, or a heel who defaulted to out of sight, out of mind? "No. It's not about Kendra. She has Carter like it was always meant to be. Fated. I'm happy she's happy."

"Fated, my ass. So. Not Feathers, so why? I know why I want him back; he was my best friend. But you? Let's just say he wasn't always the friendliest guy where you were concerned."

The nausea rose in Ray's stomach and he could feel the blush rise along with it too, the warmth of it spreading across his body, concentrating in those two low spots on his cheeks, uncontrollable signifiers that Ray had hated since prep school, when sharp-eyed mean kids had used them to pry out his secrets and use them against him. At least now he had the whole unshaven thing working in his favor to hide them.

He swallowed and made a stab at nonchalant. "It's not that...I mean, he didn't...I...well...it's like...we...that is-" And nonchalant took a nosedive off the bench and crashed and burned at his feet. Ray gave up. "It's complicated, okay?" he said, far louder than he'd planned.

Mick squinted at him, confused, and then his eyes widened until Ray could see his irises marooned in a sea of white. Oh, crap.

"Oh," said Mick. "Oh no. Oh no. That can't...I did not need to know that!"

"Well, you asked," said Ray in the frostiest tone he could muster. Which was probably somewhere just below room temperature because really, if there was ever a ground-swallowing moment, Ray would pick this one.

They stared at each other in an increasingly uncomfortable silence, Ray wondering if Mick learned the unreadability thing from Snart or if it was the other way around. An itch started low down in his back, between his shoulder blades. Ray resisted the urge to turn himself into a contortionist to get at it. Instead he clapped his hands together and said, "Right! Are we gonna get on with this or not?"

Mick surveyed him for a second longer before jerking his chin up in what Ray hoped was acceptance of the whole weird deal. "Yup," he said. "Hand me a thingy."  
"No one gets tools they call a thingy."

"Haircut," said Mick with a warning growl, and Ray handed him the thingy.

***

Ray tapped a complicated pattern on the tablet screen and looked up, frowning at the transparent walls of the brig. "Power up, Gideon," he said.

There was a moment's silence.

Ray's frown deepened and he glared at the ceiling because it was as good a place as any to direct his ire towards a formless AI. "Gideon, power u-"

"Doctor Palmer, though I applaud your intentions, may I take this opportunity to remind you of my initial reservations about this course of action? Captain Hunter would not-"

Behind Ray, Mick made a sound guaranteed to make a minimum of 76% of ordinary folks pee their pants. "This ain't our first go round at this rodeo. We get it. Go tell tales to your boss when he gets back, but right now do what the nice man says and _power up_."

"Of course," said Gideon, the hint of frost in her voice neatly obliterated by the swelling hum of electricity as the containment field came online.

"Okay," said Ray, wondering if he ought to get Medbay to give him an anti-nausea shot because the queasiness seemed to have taken up permanent residence. "There is literally no way of knowing whether this thing works or not until we have Snart here. So…"

He turned on his heel and clapped Mick on the upper arm, getting a scowl for his trouble. "We about ready to go?"

"How does this work again?"

Ray scrolled quickly through his mental vocabulary list. He'd long since realized Mick wasn't as dumb as he played (and if he had been, the years of being Chronos had put paid to that). But the intricacies of quantum theory and the chronometric distribution equations he'd invented from whole cloth, that would either win him the Nobel prize for physics or for literature depending on which way it jumped, were not in Mick's wheelhouse however you sliced it. By now, Mick's scowl was beginning to deepen, so right words or not, Ray jumped in, feet first.

"So, if we're working on the principle that the time explosion stripped Snart into undefinable quantities and scattered him through his own timeline, we can think of each of those as echoes, if you like. Shadows. Each one a part of the whole." Ray stopped, checking that Mick was following. He didn't look like he was going to rip Ray's head off and stuff his fist down his neck, so Ray forged ahead.

"There's no reason why these echoes couldn't be what people perceive as ghosts, though I would imagine they're more formless. That walking on your grave sensation that everyone gets sometimes? Perhaps that's an echo of our own future self passing through us; there's no reason that time explosions are the only way to create them. It definitely warrants further study. I wonder if-"

"Stay on target."

"Yes. Sorry. So my working theory is that there's a way to reverse this stripping. The portable containment unit will help us to collect the echoes, and then we'll transfer them here to the brig. The containment field should prevent any...um...seepage. I'm assuming there's no real sentience to these echoes, merely an instinctive survival instinct to hold on to whatever they can. I've estimated Snart's molecular mass using Medbay's data and so if we get hold of one we can figure out how many we need to find. Gotta catch them all!"  
Mick's nostrils flared. "And then what?"

Ray shook his head. "That's is where we go off reservation," he said. "This whole thing is a wild shot in the dark, but the last part is trying to hit a moving target blindfolded while strapped to a gyroscope. The best way I can figure it is that if a time explosion split him apart then once we have all the echoes here we set off a controlled implosion at high pressure to force him back together."

"That's the easy version?"

"Well, yeah." Ray ducked his head, rubbing his neck. Said out loud it sounded even more outlandish than it had in his head. That literature prize was looking more likely by the second.

"What happens once the...whaddayoucallit?...the anchor time passes? Does the echo just carry on or what?"

"I have no idea. I think no? I think maybe the echo is looped in that particular space and time, so it just fades, I guess. Except really it's cycled back to the beginning. Remember that thing about time being more of a curve than a straight line? This particular curve has gone full circle."

"You think."

"I think." I hope, Ray didn't add. Science put together with spit and string that it was, who knew if it would hold?

"Will it work?"

"I don't know. But trying is better than sitting around doing nothing, right?"

"Right."

"And what about you? Have you done your homework?"

"I got a list, yeah. Even put it in order so we don't have to jump about."

Ray brightened. "So let's do it!"

Mick looked him up and down, shaking his head. "You might wanna clean up first, or they'll catch wind of you a mile off. Won't work if we can't go stealth."

"I never knew criminals went so crazy for personal hygiene," said Ray, but Mick had a point. He was pretty gross by now. Not great for blending into whatever surroundings they found themselves in. Besides, if they pulled off a miracle and got Leonard back, was this unwashed, unshaved mess what he wanted Leonard's first sight of him to be? No. No, it was not

"I'll go wash up," he said. "You go charm Gideon into taking us to the first place on your list."

***


	2. Chapter 2

"You've got to be kidding me, said Ray looking down at the scrubs and white coat the Waverider had seen fit to clothe him in. "I'm not setting one foot in that delivery room."

"Everything's gotta start somewhere," said Mick, giving him a shove and then keeping his hand pressed into Ray's back, so that a stumble became forward motion. "Besides, I have no idea how the tech works and also? Whose face would you trust to catch the slippery bastard as he shoots out?" 

Ray turned to stare at Mick, appalled. "If you think I'm actually going to deliver Snart then I suggest you think again." 

"Whatever. Let's just get going before he makes his entrance. Don't wanna miss ours." 

They walked in through the hospital entrance, Mick snagging a wheelchair to give his orderly impression a little flair. Maternity was on the second floor, along a long hallway. They passed a small waiting area, hard-backed, orange plastic chairs set around two small, scrubbed tables. One harboured a box of Kleenex and a couple of carelessly folded newspapers, and the other a bright yellow plant pot containing a plastic plant of unknown aetiology, the tips of the leaves faded white through over-exposure to the glaring strip light overhead. 

A couple of the chairs were occupied: one by a black guy in large, horn-rimmed glasses, biting his lip and twisting a polystyrene cup around and around in shaking hands; the other with a middle-aged white guy, sprawled back in his chair, gut straining at the flannel shirt he was wearing, seemingly fast asleep. Ray saw the white of his knuckles as he gripped the chair's sides, though. Neither looked anything like the pictures he'd seen of Leonard's father in the newspapers. Knowing what he knew about the guy, he wasn't exactly surprised. 

"Who needs signs when you've got screaming?" Mick muttered. 

"Hmm," said Ray, trying to manage the detector with one hand, keeping it low down by his side to avoid unwanted attention. The green lines on the small screen wavered. Ray swallowed the bile suddenly swamping his throat. "I think I've got something." 

Mick didn't even alter his stride, but Ray could see it all the same in the set of his shoulders: the brief flickering of hope. With any luck they'd fan that flame into full blaze. Mick would like that on so many levels, Ray thought. 

Mick jerked his head to the right. "This one," he said. 

Ray stopped and looked at the door. "Mrs. Snart," was printed in a neat hand on a strip of masking tape across its surface. Ragged ends of earlier iterations curling away from the institution green paint showed she was the latest in a long line of occupants. Hours upon hours of sweat and toil to produce what? Future criminals, future mayors and everything in between. Ray swung the detector around and pointed it toward the door. The green lines wavered again, this time refusing to settle back to their straight-edged status quo. 

He bugged his eyes at Mick, sliding his gaze back down to the detector and hoping Mick followed. 

"Game on," muttered Mick. "Get in there, doc." And as if to make absolutely sure Ray wasn't going to pike out on him now, he gave him a small shove, with just enough momentum to send Ray straight through the door, detector in one hand, containment unit in the other. 

Inside he ground to a halt, managing to stop himself tripping over his own feet with only minimal flailing. Smooth. It was a small room, barely big enough to hold a hospital bed, the cheerfully flowered curtain dragged far enough around the rail that initially Ray could only see the bottom of the occupant, heels dug into the mattress, feet and lower legs forming a check mark around them. Busying herself with a chart was a nurse in immaculate white, cap pinned into place on unmoving waves of coppery-grey hair. She turned at Ray's total-stealth-failure entrance and frowned. 

"I didn't-" she started, only to be interrupted by the woman in the bed. 

"Oh, hell no," she said with an emphasis that plucked at Ray's memories. "You're not putting that thing anywhere near me." 

Ray swivelled towards her, wildly averting his eyes as he realized exactly what the regulation blue cotton sheet was and wasn't covering. He settled on her face, lips tight and bleached with pain, and steely determination in her dark eyes. He followed her gaze to the containment unit. 

"Oh," he said. "Oh, no, this isn't for-" He waggled his head in a way that he hoped indicated that no way was he sticking anything anywhere in the region of her nethers. 

"Good to know, because if-" Only Ray never got to hear what that if was, because at that point her lips tightened impossibly, her eyes squeezed shut and she let out a wail that prickled at Ray's skin in primordial response. 

He found himself shoved out of the way by the nurse who dove between her patient's legs. 

"That's it," she said, with an encouraging nod. "I see the head. You're nearly there, honey. Just a little more." 

The detector went crazy and nearly shot out of Ray's hand as he fumbled to switch the containment unit on. The two women were too occupied with bringing Leonard into the world to pay any attention to the man crouching in the corner of the room. Amid the noise and ratcheting tension, he was willing the dial on the containment unit to move, to indicate that not only had he been right about the existence of time echoes, but that he'd managed to locate and isolate one of them. That this crazy plan, that would get him kicked out of all but the most esoteric science clubs, actually stood a good chance of working. 

That he could get Len back. 

Ray closed his eyes, desperately telling his body that now was not the time to throw up. If anyone in the room had the right to do that, it was Mrs Snart. The containment unit jumped under his hand and Ray's eyes flew open. The dial was way up into red, vibrating as if it were going to shake right off. There was something in there, whatever it was. Quickly, Ray stabbed at the controls, switching over from the intake chamber to active containment. Then he stood, muttered an apology in the general direction of Mrs Snart's legs, unheeded by either woman, then got the hell out of Dodge. 

"Well?" asked Mick, straightening from his lounging position against the wall. 

Ray nodded his head, too scared to talk in case Mick heard something in his voice that he shouldn't. 

Mick punched Ray in the upper arm. "Nice going, Haircut. Now let's split before we run into the baby-snatching duo and have to make with the explaining the unexplainable." 

"Ow," said Ray, and grinned all the way back to the ship. 

***

"I thought I'd see…" Mick trailed off, staring at the modified brig, containment field casting a vibrating blue sheen on the glass walls. 

"What?" 

Mick shrugged. "Something. This just looks like empty space." 

"Right." Ray nodded. "Because if my calculations are correct--and I know I'm working to a best-guess theory here, but I'm pretty good at this sort of thing--we've only got one thirteenth of him here. Unlucky for him, lucky for us. Also, he's dissociated." 

"He's what?" 

"His atoms aren't cohering. They're separate entities held by loose bonds so they're not disapparating, but they're not forming any type of cohesive whole." 

"Yeah, like I said, _he's what_?" 

"Sorry. He's basically a cloud? But instead of being made up of individually visible water drops he's more like the water in the air when it's super humid. Say like in Miami. You don't see it, but you feel it. Except instead of filling the whole space he's remembering some sense of himself with a body, so the atoms stay within a defined space." 

"He's remembering?" 

Mick's tone was flat, but his eyebrows were furrowed in the way Ray had learned to interpret as anywhere among the raft of emotions that ranged from generally displeased to generally horrified depending on which disastrous situation they were in this time. 

"Oh, no!" Ray said, impulsively reaching out to touch Mick's arm. "Not like that. Not at all. He doesn't _know_ this is happening. It's like water knows it's water whatever happens to it. Freeze it? You get ice. But heat it and it's water again, same as before. It doesn't suddenly become…" Ray waved his hand in the air, trying to find the right analogy. 

"A horse's ass." 

"Well, yeah. Or bread, or ice cream, or whatever. Water is water. It knows what it is. But it doesn't _know_. Does that make sense?" 

"Some." 

"Okay, then." Ray checked in with the eyebrows. They'd smoothed to their usual two caterpillar state: all was quiet on the Heatwave front. "So where next?" 

***

"This better not take much longer. I got twigs trying to get where no twigs should go and there's something crawling on my neck. It better not be fire ants." 

"Fire ants?" The bush rustled violently as Ray tried to look in all directions at once, thigh muscles tightening in readiness for getting the hell out of there. 

Mick's hand yanked him back down and he hissed into Ray's ear. "Settle down, you goof. If I'm gonna wind up bitten to hell, I sure as shit ain't leaving here empty-handed. Boxed. Whatever." 

"You're right, you're right," muttered Ray, and tried to concentrate on his instruments. In the distance he could hear sirens, but this was Central City in the 1970s and sirens were like wallpaper. So far every one had tapered off into a flattening, attenuated whine, to be eventually overwritten by the sounds of the suburbs. Even in this not-exactly-salubrious neighborhood, lawnmowers growled and kids yelled and laughed, the dull thud of ball against tarmac suggesting there was a pickup game of basketball being played down the street. 

This time the wailing got louder, cutting through the yells and scattering them in different directions. Brakes squealed and deep-throated car engines revved, then cut off abruptly. The sirens' lights strobed through the dense foliage, illuminating the screen of the detector in pale, ghostly flashes. Bitter saliva flooded Ray's mouth: surely the moment they'd been waiting for was almost on top of them. His hands began to shake and he clenched them tighter around his instruments. Beside him, Mick was perfectly still, but his breathing was shallow and the tension rolled off him in powerful, disorienting waves. 

"Hold on," muttered Ray. "Just keep...just hold on." 

Car doors slammed, and from his barely adequate viewpoint Ray could see uniformed officers of the CCPD making their way down the path to the front door. One of the cops banged on the door, the hollow thudding reverberating through the air. A dog started to bark, a high-pitched yelp that didn't stop, worming its way into Ray's head. He shoved a finger in his ear and wiggled it, trying to dislodge the sound. It didn't work. 

"CCPD, open up, Lewis. We know you're in there!" 

Then nothing except the dog and the thumping of his own heart. 

The officer banged on the door again. “Snart, you can do this the easy way or the hard way, and O'Brien's been looking to beat someone down since he caught his wife finger-banging the president of his kid's PTA. Do yourself a favor and give yourself up clean." 

Another pause: even the dog stopped for a few seconds before starting up again. And then the door opened and a dark-haired man with a neat beard took a couple of steps out onto the porch, arms held behind his head. Based on the newspaper reports he'd seen in his early days aboard the Waverider, Ray easily recognised him as Snart's father, Lewis. 

"Lewis Snart, I am arresting you for…" began the cop and then Ray was paying no more attention because the detector was going crazy. He shifted, trying to see past Lewis to the inside of the house. He squinted into the harsh sunlight, seeing something in the shadow of the doorway. The figures resolved: the first a slender woman, instantly familiar, despite the passage of years deepening the lines and sharpening the bones in her face. She held onto the shoulders of a little boy who stood in front of her, his face wearing an expression so naked in its disappointment and despair that Ray's eyes prickled with reflexive sympathy. He looked back down at the detector. 

"You gonna hit that thing or not?" Mick muttered against his ear. 

Ray shook his head. "It's not quite...I gotta get closer." 

"Closer?" 

"Yeah." 

"How?" 

"I don't know, but I've got to do it now or we might lose him." 

"Leave it to me." Before Ray could respond, Mick was crawling out of the back of the bush, taking advantage of the crowd gathering there to slip onto the sidewalk. 

"Hey!" he yelled. "Hey, cops, this way. I know where he stashed the loot." 

All heads turned to Mick and the family in the house were forgotten. In a weird half crouch, half crawl, Ray slipped along the side of the fence and from there onto the porch. He plastered himself to the wall, edging as close to the door as he dared. Yeah, this was exactly right. 

A small, plaintive voice said, "But he promised to bring me to the carnival," and Ray hit the button on the containment unit, breathing a sigh of relief as the dials shifted. 

"It's just gonna be me and you for a little while, sugar. Don't fret now, we'll go together and have fun, won't we?" 

The door closed with a soft click, and Ray resisted the temptation to slide down the boards to the floor. Across the yard he saw Mick shrugging and saying something to the police officers. Mick turned his head, catching Ray's eye. Ray nodded and saw Mick's cheek twitch as he turned back to his interrogators, body language shifting into the gives-no-fucks stance. Uh-oh, this could turn bad fast. Ray shoved the detector into his back pocket and stealthed his way back along the fence, mixing with the onlookers. He grabbed Mick by the shoulder. 

"There you are," he said, squeezing Mick's shoulder to beg him to please not say anything that could get them into trouble. Or, preferably, anything at all. He barrelled on, just in case. "I'm sorry, officers, this is my...patient. He has delusions. The nice kind, you know? Where he just wants to help. But he knows nothing. Nothing! Sorry for wasting your time, we'll be on our way. Right, Michael?" 

"Don't call me that," said Mick, snapping his teeth together. Then Ray felt the muscles relax under his hand and Mick's voice got strangely slow and what Ray could only describe as soupy. "I just wanted to hay-ulp. I'm gonna go with mah doc here and have a nice old lay down." 

"And take his meds," Ray added. 

"And take mah meds," Mick agreed. 

"No problem," said the police officer. "Just keep him off the streets. And maybe look into that electric shock treatment. Might be exactly what he needs." 

"Oh, absolutely, sir," said Ray, tugging Mick backwards. "We'll just...go." 

It wasn't until halfway down the street that Mick said, "You come near me with anything electrical and I will attach it to your balls." 

"Shame. I was thinking a cattle prod could prove quite effective in certain circumstances." Ray bumped against Mick's shoulder and was relieved not to get shoved under a car in return. This relationship was going great. 

"You got him?" 

"I got him." 

"For sure?" 

"Absolutely for sure." 

"Okay, then," said Mick. "Two down. Let's go." 

***

"He did what when he was nine?" 

"Stole the principal's wallet. I told you already." 

"Yes, I know, but…" Ray blew out his cheeks and put his hands on his hips, shaking his head. " _Nine_. He was nine. When I was nine I was building a working model of Saturn Five, wondering how I could persuade mom to tell the cook that pancakes for breakfast every day was the healthy option and petitioning the principal at my prep school to let us little kids wear pants in winter. Those shorts were…" He trailed off, shuddering at the memory of stinging thighs and perma-skinned knees. 

"Well, whoopdeedoo, Little Lord Fauntleroy. Newsflash, most folks live on earth not planet la la land. Being fucked up doesn't have an age limit." 

Ray's heart thudded a painful beat. He dropped his arms. "You're right. I slid right into rich white doofus territory there, didn't I? I'm sorry. I'm not oblivious, I'm just...forgetful. Feel free to punch me when I get too self-absorbed." 

"Don't tempt me." 

But there was no edge to Mick's tone, so Ray knew he was safe for now. 

"So what's the plan?" 

"Plans ain't my wheelhouse. We go in, get the echo, get out." 

"Mick, it's a school. With children. We can't waltz in and hang around the principal's office hoping something will happen. Especially not looking like-" Ray clamped his mouth shut. 

"Like what?" 

What was that about being hanged for a sheep? "Like you'd rip the head off a kid's Barbie and shove it down their throat? Have you looked in a mirror at all, lately? I mean, I'm your friend and I like the scowling, it totally works for you, but around little kids? Also, I saw you with your younger self, so." 

"Point taken." 

Mick's resting kill face vanished and contorted into something else, one corner of his mouth turning upwards and lips parting to show his teeth. His eyebrows lifted and his eyes widened. Ray stared. 

"Are you having a stroke? What are you-? Oh my gosh, are you trying to smile? For real? That's...possibly the third most terrifying thing I've ever seen." 

Across from him, Mick's face relaxed and suddenly he was smiling for real, startling a laugh out of Ray. And then Mick was laughing too, throwing his head back and roaring with it. It was the first time Ray could remember seeing Mick genuinely laughing, and he couldn't help but respond, giggling at first, but then all out belly laughing. And as they laughed it seemed to Ray that something broke, that the ropes of tension that had been strung taut between them since they'd started this whole adventure were sheared through, and without knowing there was a boundary in the first place, Ray knew he'd just been welcomed across it. 

The laughter drifted naturally away and Mick's usual expression returned. "So what is the plan?" 

"Hmm, not sure. Wait a second. Gideon?" 

"Yes, Doctor Palmer?" 

"Can you access Snart's school records?" 

"I'm doing so now." 

"Awesome. Is there anything in his fourth grade reports about stealing? Or anything that suggests he wound up in the principal's office?" 

"Mr. Snart's school records are exemplary up until 1981 when there's a note of an incident with another pupil at morning recess resulting in a suspension. After that, I'm afraid the reports of misbehavior become more frequent." 

Ray looked at Mick, who nodded. 

"Thanks, Gideon. Plot a course to the nearest abandoned lot to the school and get us there for...what time is recess?" 

"According to the fourth grade schedule, ten a.m." 

"Thanks. So get us there for eight thirty. That'll be plenty of time." 

Ray and Mick moved to take their seats, pulling the safety harnesses over their heads. 

"And that plan?" 

"I'm going to call the school and…" But the rest of the sentence went unfinished as the time drive went into action and Ray's world went black around the edges. 

***

Ray's comm crackled. "Landed that kid a facer. Guess Snart was always a scrappy one. Coming your way, Haircut." 

"Copy that," murmured Ray into his cuff. He shifted the carpet bag on his knee, unclasping the stiff brass catch as subtly as he could. The rasping click might as well have been a bomb dropped into the silence of the outer office. The secretary with the unnaturally red Dorothy Hamill wedge cut and jacket with shoulder pads that would take out any chancy running back narrowed her eyes and shut the ledger she'd been working in with more vehemence than Ray thought was necessary. 

She looked at him, brown eyes loaded with irritation. "I'm sure the Principal will be done with her call shortly. You were a last minute addition to her schedule." 

"Yes, you did say." 

The look the woman cast Ray withered things he hadn't known were available for withering, but before she could follow up with a scathing reply, the door to the hall swung open and a boy slouched in, the scowl on his face hovering somewhere along the indistinct borders between defiance and shame. He had blood on his knuckles, Ray noticed, and the same mulish set of his chin that Ray had grown to know well. His chest tightened. What had gotten little Leonard Snart here, to the first step on the path that led to juvie and jail? He was only a kid. 

The secretary changed in a split second, the vexed woman disappearing, even the lines of her shoulder pads seeming to become softer. "Leo, honey, now what's happened here?" 

Ray saw the boy's lips tremble and he could barely make out the words, "I punched Jimmy." 

"Oh, sweetie, no. That's not like you, not one bit." The secretary swept around her desk and stretched out her hands towards the boy. He shook his head, a tight, small movement and she let her hands fall. 

"You go on in to the Principal, now. She'll fix your hand right up. Tell her the truth, mind, Leo. She can't help you if you don't." 

Leo's nod was also tight and small and then he pushed open the inner door and was gone. 

Ray looked surreptitiously down at the machines shadowed in his capacious bag. A green line flickered across a screen. Something was getting ready to happen. 

"What's that?" the secretary asked from closer than Ray would have liked. The sweet scent of jasmine wafted towards him as she craned her neck in sudden interest. Ray resisted the temptation to snap the clasp closed to keep away prying eyes: it was too important to keep watching the screen. 

With one eye to his mission and another trying to look as if he were completely engaged in this exchange with a stranger who held his potential future in his hands, Ray said as airily as he could manage, "Oh this? This is the new science equipment we discussed on the telephone. Going to revolutionize the classroom, let me tell you." 

"But what does it _do_?" 

"Ah, well…" The waving lines picked up a little speed and amplitude. They were getting close. "It's a little complicated to explain to the layperson." 

The secretary straightened up, folding her arms, stretching the material of her polyester jacket until it shone in the reflected glow of the strip light. "Try." 

Ray gulped. "It has a multitudinous purpose unlimited by the normal boundaries of what we might call the hard sciences. With these machines we can experiment on nothing less than life itself, setting up a variety of investigations to determine everything from the rate of decay of a cucumber to the optimal life cycle for a fruit fly and the potentiality for genetic manipulation. Now, should the manifold-" 

The secretary held up her hand. "Scientists and salespeople. You're as bad as each other." She turned her back on him and strode back to her station behind her desk, opening a new ledger with a dull thud on the wooden surface. 

Ray took the opportunity to draw the containment unit from the bag, swivelling around until his knees were practically touching the principal's door. The lines were all over the place now: convergence was imminent. 

Three...two...one… 

As Ray hit the switch he had a split second to note the movement of the dials with pleasure before the door was opened and the boy--Leonard--almost fell over his legs. The kid tried to right himself and Ray saw the way his hand drifted to one of his pockets, the hard, square outline obvious to anyone who knew what to look for. 

Ray put out his free hand to steady the kid and their eyes met for a second. "You'll think it can't get better, but it will," he blurted out. "You'll know who to trust when the time is right." 

And it could have been his imagination playing tricks on him, but Ray could have sworn he saw a flicker of something like recognition in the boy's eyes before his scowl deepened. "What's it got to do with you, mister?" Leonard spat out, and high-tailed it out of there. 

"Poor lamb," said the secretary more to herself than anyone else. 

"Yeah," agreed Ray. He ostentatiously checked his watch. "Now, about that meeting?" 

***

"This is like déja vu all over again," muttered Ray, as he clocked the peeling tape with 'Mrs. Snart' printed on it in neat capital letters. It wasn't the same door as before, but it was the same hospital, and, judging by the fading of the leaves to somewhere about halfway down their length, the same plastic plant refusing to wilt on the table in the waiting area. 

"Think yourself lucky you don't have to come face to face with-" 

"Yes, thank you, Mick. We don't have to talk about that. Ever." Ray shuddered. Birth was a blessed, glorious, and really gory event. "Well, we're here, Lewis and Snart are not. So what now?" 

Mick shrugged. "Would you let your kid watch you scream out your sister? We got the time of birth and that's it. He'll be by." 

"And you're sure this-" 

"I already told you. Snart only cared about two things back in the day: Lisa and the score." 

"And you." 

To Ray this was a no-brainer and so he was surprised when Mick stiffened in response. He was silent for a moment. "Guess so," he said. "Let's go look like expectant pops or something." 

They took it in turns to sit on the uncomfortable chairs or lounge as nonchalantly as possible against the wall that separated the waiting area from the main hallway. It was early afternoon and the place bustled with visitors, staff and patients. Balloons bobbed past at head height like slightly drunk relatives, and small children toted smartly beribboned teddy bears almost as big as themselves. Everyone smiled at him, and he smiled back. This was the kind of hospital infection you wanted to catch. 

"Watch it, Haircut, they're wheeling the kid out." Ray jumped at Mick's breath against his ear. He hadn't even noticed the guy move. Kudos on the ninja skills, he thought, turning his head to follow Mick's pointing finger. 

"Should we follow? I'm not up on post-natal protocol. Are they taking her for a...bath...or something?" 

Mick shrugged. "Nursery. Let the mom get some rest. We go where the kid goes." 

"Yes, but," said Ray, trailing Mick down the hallway, "how do you _know_ that? It's not like they...Wait." He stopped dead in his tracks. "You don't have a kid you haven't told anyone about, have you?" 

Mick flipped him the bird over his shoulder and kept on walking. Ray frowned, then jogged to catch up, muttering to himself about the state of sex education in the private school system. 

It turned out that Mick was right. It also turned out that loitering by a nursery full of sleeping newborns attracted a lot of attention. 

"Which one's yours?" a guy with a neat moustache and tired eyes asked in their general direction. 

"That one," they answered in unison, pointing to the crib one over from baby Lisa. Mick immediately cast Ray a horrified look. It took Ray a second to catch on and then his mouth was moving before he'd even realized. 

"It's not that we...I thought that's where the nurse...so it could…" 

Mick clamped a hand around Ray's wrist and bared his teeth in the general direction of Mr. Tired Moustache. "You'll have to excuse my...him. We've been up with the mom all night. Tough labor." 

Ray saw the double-take as if played in slow motion. Eyes swiveled from Mick to him, to the babies behind glass and back again. 

"I...well, congratulations?" The man blinked fast and turned back to the babies, pointing to the last crib on the first row. A tiny baby with a face scrunched in determined sleep lay swaddled in a yellow blanket, ears escaping a matching hat. "This one's mine. My little Manjeet. Our lives will be topsy turvy now, hey?" 

"You bet," said Mick as Ray managed a strangled noise that contained at least some speech sounds that could have been translated as English. 

Luckily for Ray's equilibrium, just then a nurse rounded the corner and approached the new father. 

"Mr. Singh, we're going to bring baby back to mom now for a feed. Will you come or maybe you want to go home? Get some rest?" 

"Oh, no. Staying awake is the least I can do, don't you think?" 

"I can tell you're going to be a good one." The nurse's voice faded as she led him into the nursery, Mr. Tired Moustache obviously immediately forgetting there had been anyone else in the world apart from his baby. 

For once Ray was good with being ignored. Mick let go of his wrist and stepped back against the wall. 

"Quick thinking." 

"Don't talk about it. You need to go in." 

"What?" 

"You need to go inside. We can't hang about out here like this. Besides, the kid only saw you a little while ago. He's smart enough to remember, which leads nowhere good." 

"Mick, I can't go inside. That's a room full of babies!" 

Mick nodded slowly as if communing with someone particularly slow on the uptake. "Yes. I see them." 

"What if a nurse comes along and I'm crouching in a room full of babies! They'll throw away the key." 

Mick grunted. "Then don't get caught." He walked over to the glass and leaned towards it, his hands shading his eyes as he stared into the room. "On the left, next to the cabinet behind the door. Good place. Can't see you from here and your exit's clear as long as whoever goes in clears the doorway." 

"And if they don't?" 

"Left hook?" 

Ray sighed. "You make it sound so easy." 

"It is. Stop wasting time and get in there." 

"And what will you be doing while I'm contemplating life in prison for attempted child abduction?" 

"I smell bacon. There's gotta be a cafeteria around someplace." 

"Really? I'm gonna…" Ray gestured at the nursery, "...and you're gonna go stuff your face?" 

Mick shrugged again. "Checked it from all sides. Seems a solid plan." 

"Yeah, for you," Ray muttered to himself. Out loud he said, "Fine. _Fine_. Stay on comms." 

"Yes, boss," said Mick, and Ray refused to give him the satisfaction of hearing the sarcasm in his tone. 

He squeezed one eye shut as he turned the handle on the door with extreme care. It wasn't going to make him any quieter, but somehow it made him feel better. He was trying. For the babies! 

"Hello, tiny humans," he whispered, wiggling his fingers at the cribs. "I promise I don't want to hurt any of you, even if one of you turns out to be a wannabe supervillain in the future. It's not like any of you asked for-" 

"Are you talking to me?" Mick cut in across comms. 

"Well, you've got the same haircut as most of these guys and your appetite's about the same, but-" 

" _Haircut_." 

"I was talking to them. Shutting up now." 

Fitting himself and the equipment into the corner Mick had scoped out without waking any of the room's occupants was not a simple task. Ray was pretty sure that if there were ever an inquiry into some weirdo who crept into the maternity unit nursery and sang nursery rhymes under their breath, stared at some Star Trek future technology gadgets and then left, forensic scientists would have plenty of his skin cells to play with. 

"Ow," was how this thought got verbalised. 

Every now and then one of the babies would stretch and give a little warbling half cry, half yawn. Ray's stomach churned with dread that one of these exhalations would turn full throttle and then the whole place would be in uproar with nurses descending left and right to soothe troubled brows and chase him through the hospital with sticks. Maybe needles, not sticks, he reasoned, but that thought was not reassuring. 

"Don't wake up, little babies," he sang under his breath, "Keep those eyes closed tight." 

"Don't call us," Mick muttered in his ear. 

From here he couldn't hear much outside but footsteps and the occasional muted voice. Then there was a sharp tapping on the glass and lines began to waver on the screen. Ray jerked his head up. Snart was here. Leonard. Leo. Whoever he was at this moment was here. He heard an excited murmur and the low, measured reply. There was another tap on the glass and an answering mewl from one of the cribs. 

Oh, hells bells, thought Ray. Don't tap any more! Don't start the baby apocalypse! The lines moved more rapidly now, but they weren't quite at their peak. Now was not the time for the Feed Me Chorus. 

Just then the door rattled, and Ray found that he was briefly glad to be in such a confined space as it stopped him falling over in the terror of anticipation. The deeper voice grew louder, sharper now, the words still lost through the thick door, but the shape stark and clear. _What the fuck do you think you're doing, kid? Think the rules don't apply to you?_

The door flew open anyway and the detector went crazy. The small shape of a ten year old boy skidded past Ray without a second glance, heading straight for his baby sister and scooping her up in his arms. 

"Hey, sis," he crooned, his tow-head bent over to kiss her forehead. "I'm your big brother and I promise I'll always take care of you, okay? It's you and me." 

Ray's chest tightened, unable to take his eyes off the tableau in front of him. 

" _Ray_. Do we have it?" 

The voice cut through Ray's reverie and he blinked himself back to full awareness, hitting the button just in time. He watched the dials shift as Lewis hissed at his son from just beyond the door. 

"Get back here, dumbass. You want to get kicked out, huh? What would your precious mom think about that? Selfish little shit." 

Ray clenched his teeth and reminded himself that he couldn't punch Lewis's face even if that was potentially a legitimate escape plan. Instead he gathered himself into a crouch and half-staggered, half-charged out of the room, under Lewis's outstretched arm. 

"Hey!" yelled Lewis as Ray ran past. "What the hell were you doing in there?" 

Ray had to trust that Lewis's natural instinct to make his son's life hell would win out over some random lurking guy. He didn't look back. 

"Got it. Move!" He skidded around a corner and through a door marked as a staircase. "Ow, ow, ow!" he chanted as he ran down the steps, each one sending pins and needles up his legs. "Next time you can do the part where you lose all feeling in your limbs. It feels like I'm running on marshmallows." 

"Most people talk less when they're running away." 

As much as he hated to admit it, Mick had a point, so Ray put his head down and ran. 

***

"You sure about this?" 

"He told me he never celebrated Thanksgiving after he turned twelve. Figure it must have been some turkey." 

"So it's back to the old homestead, is it? I can't say I've missed those bushes, which, by the way, will be sporting considerably less foliage. How are we gonna play this?" 

Mick shrugged. "No one's out on Thanksgiving. Too much eating. If we sneak in back we can probably hole up against the wall with no one noticing." 

"And if they do?" 

Mick bared his teeth in what Ray was learning to recategorize as a grin to be shared, not a snarl to run the hell away from. "How do you feel about drains?" 

Ray didn't feel much of anything about drains, though he did have some choice thoughts about what their own Room of Requirement had decided would make for great uniforms for drain unclogging experts in the 1980s. Khaki had never been his color, no matter what they'd tried to teach him at prep school. Was he doomed to be forever denied parachute pants? 

"Yes," said Mick. "For the sake of the rest of the world. Now shut up and look like your true king is sewage." 

It was early and the late November sun shrugged off its hazy cloud robes and shone full force, decorating the uncared for scrubland beyond the fenced-off backyard with sharp, golden light and brisk-edged dark shadows. It looked like a place for adventure. The fence itself wasn't faring so well, with peeling varnish, but a slat or two swung loose just enough for a large dog or small kid to get through, if they were to be adventurous enough. Ray wasn't a gambling man, but it was a sure bet that the loose screws had Len's handiwork all over them. 

He poked about the gravel with a long metal tube, bright orange plastic tip rooting aimlessly through the tiny pebbles and hopeful straggling shoots. He'd managed to disguise the containment unit with the cylinder slung across his back and Mick had the handheld detector unit with instructions to explain it as state of the art ground penetrating radar if curiosity got the better of any neighborhood cats. 

"We could be at this a while," he whispered. 

"Yup." 

"With no bathroom breaks." 

"Nope." 

"And nothing to do except watch." 

"Yup." 

Ray stopped moving and glared at Mick. "Don't you get bored?" 

"I go places," said Mick and refused to elaborate. 

After a few more attempts to engage him in quiet conversation, Ray gave up and fell silent also. In contrast to the last time they were here, the neighborhood seemed to have come to a dead stop. A few birds twittered and chirped on telegraph wires, and every now and then a car passed out front, but other than that all the hustle and bustle was internal, safe behind plasterboard walls. 

Until the yelling started. 

Ray thought it was a teevee at first, turned up by a deaf grandma or over-invested cousin. But it wasn't. He couldn't make out the words, but the anger and fear rolled over him, tensing every muscle, ready to ride to the rescue like they always did. Like they were supposed to do. 

He cast a desperate glance at Mick, who shook his head. This wasn't their fight. They couldn't change what happened, not without risking the success of the mission, and that had to come first. 

"Through here," Mick muttered, hauling away the loose slats like it was as easy as tearing pages from a book. "C'mon. No one in there gives a crap about what's happening out here." 

Ray squeezed through the hole after him, ducking as glass exploded from the window, and the cause of its destruction landed in the dusty yard, skidding to a halt just inches from Mick's feet. 

"Thought turkeys couldn't fly," muttered Mick, crouching down and making for the security of the wall. 

"That's a myth, actually," Ray corrected him, flattening himself on the other side of the window from Mick and trying to keep one eye on the scene inside the house at the same time as reaching for his equipment. "Turkeys actually roost in trees so-" 

"Not now, Encyclopedia Brown. Work." 

Ray nodded, fast and silent. Inside, the yelling continued. Ray could hear every word now, and immediately regretted it. He recognised Lewis at once. His limited view showed him a table strewn with the detritus of a complicated dinner, dishes upturned and cranberry sauce bright across the white tablecloth like blood. At least, he hoped it was the cranberry sauce. Lewis had his wife up against the wall, hand on her throat. Ray couldn't see his other hand. 

"Don't tell me what to do with the fucking turkey, you bitch! I know how a knife works and you better watch I don't find a better use for it!" 

"Lewis, the children. Don't-" 

"They're old enough to see what a piece of shit they have for a mother. Lisa, shut the fuck up!" 

And Ray became aware of a whimpering cry, quiet as if she knew it wasn't safe to let go and wail like any other kid would. He craned his head to try and see and only caught a shadow, two headed and huddled. Hold on to her, kid, he thought. Just hold on. 

Then he heard a scream, almost unearthly in its terror and pain and he jerked his eyes back to see Leonard's mom clap a hand across her cheek, blood blooming between her fingers. 

Her wide eyes looked as if they were about to brim over with tears, but then Ray saw the exact second that her tether snapped. Instead of crying, her face hardened and between gritted teeth she ground out, "Get. Off. Me." There was no hint of a waver in her voice and, to Ray's surprise, Lewis obeyed, stepping back, hand holding the knife dropping it, clattering to the floor. 

Without taking her eyes off him, Ray watched her back up and out of sight. Lewis took a couple of steps towards her. 

"Baby, c'mon. I didn't mean it. You know how I get." 

She came back into view, purse on her shoulder and coat over her arm. She knelt and opened her arms. Now she was crying and every fiber of Ray's being told him to get in there, to protect, to save. He clenched his jaw as tightly as he could, fighting to control his breath. 

"Lenny, honey, Lisa, come here, my babies." 

And then they were there, a tiny, blonde girl and the boy who'd bloodied his own knuckles on someone else's face. He had to bend over to hold his mom, and Ray couldn't see his face, couldn't see anything as his own vision blurred. 

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You are so precious and I love you, but I can't be here. I have to go. I'm sorry." 

"Mommy, no!" The little boy sounded like something was breaking. 

"Lenny, you have to let me go. Take care of you sister like you always do, okay? You've always been my brave boy. Be brave now, baby. Be brave for me." 

Ray tore his gaze away and looked over at Mick, who looked as pale and sick as he felt. This was like Anna all over again. In the right place but hamstrung from helping. 

"The screen," whispered Mick with urgency. "Look at the damn screen." He thrust it towards Ray to emphasise his point. 

Ray blinked himself back to awareness. That's right, they had a job to do. He glanced at the readings and nodded. A door slammed, he pressed the button and watched the dials move. 

Inside Lisa cried and a thin, reedy voice sang a song Ray didn't recognise. 

"Shut the fuck up, both of you. I gotta get a board to fix that window. There better be no mess when I get back." 

"Well?" 

"Done," whispered Ray, shutting off the chamber. "Can we please go now?" 

"Thought you'd never ask." 

Back in the scrubland, Ray held up a hand to ask Mick to wait and then bent forward, hands on his knees. 

"You gonna throw up?" 

Ray shook his head. "Thinking about it." He took a couple of deep breaths and straightened up. 

"Those kids, Mick." 

Mick's lips stretched in a straight line. "Yep. The world ain't all silver spoons and velvet knickers. Welcome, I guess. We've been here a while." 

There was nothing Ray could say to that and so that's exactly what he said. 

***


	3. Chapter 3

Ray dropped Mick's pad on the table and pointed to the next unscored entry on the list. "What does this one mean?"

"Hmm?" Mick looked up from the Big Belly burger they'd picked up on a quick side jaunt. Mick had complained about all the food on board the Waverider being healthy crap and what he needed was some carb-loaded grease, but Ray knew what it really was. He needed the distraction from thinking about Leonard's tough start just as much. (And don't get him started on how weird it was to be having protective feelings about a boy who grew up to be Ray's...whatever he was.) 

"Motorcar Diner. What does it mean?" 

"Means a diner called Motorcar," said Mick, spraying crumbs onto the paper. He swept his arm over them, cleaning them off but leaving trails of grease that smeared the ink into softer shapes. 

"More details, please." 

"Could be a wild goose chase, but Snart told me about it once, back in juvie. He said after his mom was gone, his grandpop took them in, him and Lisa. He was a good guy, Snart said. Ice delivery truck driver. Maybe that's why the whole cold thing." Mick stuffed a couple of fries in his mouth and kept on talking. "Took 'em to the Motorcar, regular as clockwork every Sunday at twelve. It was across from the precinct, and Snart used to watch the cops go out alone and more often than not come back with some poor sucker in the back seat. He used to think, 'I'd never let myself be caught.'" 

"You think he's attached meaning to the place? But how would we know when?" 

"I guess we don't. But he told me that was the place he figured his mom was never coming back. That if he'd been better, maybe she would. He said he might as well be bad to the bone like his pops because that way you could see what was coming to you and get out of the way. It was easy. There's gotta be a chance that's one of those anchor thingies." 

Ray nodded, folding this gut punch of a revelation in with the others. How did people who worked around kids like this, families like this, get up out of bed every day? How did the people living it? 

"So we time skip through Sundays from when? Straight after that awful Thanksgiving?" 

"Seems right." 

"Until when?" 

"Until we hit the jackpot." 

"But…" 

"His grandpop died a few months before Snart got nabbed for B and E. They were sent back to Lewis." 

Ray winced. 

Mick shoved the remaining burger into his mouth. "Exactly," he said, and Ray wished he had an umbrella. 

The first Sunday they showed up was in early December. The Motorcar wasn't anything to write home about: your standard American Diner, all red plastic booths and formica tables bolted to the floor, but they'd gone all out to alert the customers that Thanksgiving was over and done and now Christmas was coming at them down the barrel of a gun. A tall, lopsided Christmas tree was wedged into one corner, the angel on top grazing its halo on the ceiling, cheerful multi-coloured lights covering up for the fact that the ornaments were cheap plastic with the mottled shine of the badly-stored. The windows along the whole storefront were covered in a net of lights, blinking slowly and randomly enough it could easily be some sort of experiment to see how long it would take for the first patron to snap and have an on-the-spot seizure. Paper chains looped across the ceiling, and every available surface was adorned with some sort of Christmas kitsch, from smiling Santas and snowmen to skating couples with pink cheeks (and in the girls' case not only the face kind,). It was like being slapped in the face by jollity. Ray loved it. Judging by the deepening scowl, Mick, not so much. 

"Booth or counter?" 

"Booth." 

The food, when it came, brought by a waitress with a sprig of fake holly in her hairnet, was like someone had taken a checklist of what made the perfect diner food and then erased them one by one. At least it was hot. The coffee was passable, but hot too, the diner mugs thick-walled and with the perfect concave curve to wrap hands around. Ray took a sip and looked around. 

They'd arrived a little while before twelve to get the lay of the land. One row of window booths (four) looking out onto the street and, across the road, the Central City Precinct; a handful more tables haphazardly placed in the remaining floor space; the counter, curving around a corner to the cash register and coffee machine; bar stools shoved indiscriminately under the overhang, and behind the counter the window into the kitchen, mysterious and mystifying. There were a few customers in: a couple of families in almost identical configurations (mom, dad, two kids and a baby: arrived or on the way), and two women sitting at the furthest table, chairs tucked close together, sharing a plate of fries. Everyone seemed adequately full of the joys of the season. 

And then the door swung open, setting the bell tinkling. In tumbled a tiny girl, gold curls struggling to be contained by her brightly-patterned hat, the tartan of her skirt peeking out below her bright pink coat. She was certainly eye-catching. 

"Hello!" she announced to the assembled, who she clearly knew had been brought there to give her the proper levels of attention and adoration she deserved. 

A boy followed, hot on her heels, wrapped up in a scarf that had to be at least ten feet long, and grabbed her mittened hand in his gloved one. 

"Hold your horses, Lee Lee," he said, flashing a sweet smile at the little girl. "You know how grandpa gets." 

Ray held his breath and pulled his baseball cap down low over his eyes, tugging his coat over the equipment that sat next to him on the bench. Given they were in this thing for potentially the long haul, he'd gone wholesale Magnum P.I. fake mustache to reduce the risk that Snart would recognize him, either now or later. Mick had eschewed facial hair in favor of a Macgyver mullet. Ray had wanted so bad to mock him for it, but it turned out it looked pretty darned good. How was that even possible? 

Kid Snart lifted his sister onto the bench of the booth immediately behind theirs. The bell rang again and a man came in, rosy-cheeked and slightly out of breath. He was tall, with iron grey hair clipped tight against his head. He had the same nose Leonard did, the same eyes glittering with sharp intelligence, though his were brown instead of ice blue. His skin was a shade darker, too dark to be the remnants of a midwestern summer tan, too light to put a finger on any solid origin. A mystery, just like his grandson. 

He slid into the booth opposite his grandkids. "Lisa, honey, remember you gotta stay by me. Doc said I can't run, so I can't run. What kind of fool lets their grandkid get run down by a cop car, huh?" He shook a fist in the air with no heat in the gesture. Lisa giggled. 

"She won't do it again," put in Leonard hurriedly. "I swear." 

Ray watched the set of the old man's shoulders go tight and then relax. He stretched an arm over the table, laying his hand palm up against it. Ray saw the kid's face run through a whole mix of emotions, at war with himself and what the world had taught him to expect. Tentatively he reached out his own hand and put it in his grandpa's. 

"Lenny, sweetheart, I know. I kid with you because I love you. I'm sorry if I forget sometimes what it sounds like. I'd promise you the world if I thought for a second you'd believe it. I'll just prove it to you instead, okay?" 

Ray looked out of the window, only daring to watch Leonard's face in reflection. The Christmas lights blinked him into sharp relief and then faded again. Maybe there was hope there, maybe there wasn't. Ray's throat hurt. 

"Okay?" repeated the old man. 

After a long pause the reflection nodded. "Okay." His hand rested in his grandpa's for a few seconds more and then withdrew, grabbing the salt cellar and twisting it around. 

"Hot cocoa?" demanded a small voice. "Hot cocoa and pancakes? With syrup _and_ butter?" 

The old man leaned back against the bench and nodded to the waitress. "Ask and ye shall receive, so says the Lord." 

"Yes? I can?" Lisa sounded like she may already have hit Heaven running. 

"Yes, sweetie. You can." 

Ray looked back to see Mick staring down into the coffee cup he held gripped in one hand, knuckles white. 

"I brought cards," he said, because no one needed this amount of tension unless they were building a suspension bridge. "Wanna play?" 

Mick jerked his head up. "Sure thing, Mustache. What do we got?" 

They got nothing that week except for a caffeine buzz and an incipient migraine from the flashing lights. Gideon jumped them forward. Week two also didn't register on the meter. Lisa had the same order and new red boots. Leonard fussed over her a little less and ate a little more. Mick beat Ray's ass at Gin. 

Week three, still nothing. Leonard had a new coat: a blue parka with a fur-trimmed hood. He had Lisa on his shoulders as he came through the door and swung her down with a flourish and a smile, both of which tugged at Ray's memory banks and spilled their contents all over the place. Here they were, chasing Leonard's echos and it seemed that a different echo was right in front of them the whole time. Grandpa came in and caught Ray's eye before he could skid away. He gave a small nod. Ray nodded back. Leonard ate his plate of fries and got to the bottom of a tall ice cream sundae, and Ray won his first game of Gin. 

"Don't get used to it," Mick warned him. "I've got skills." 

"I bet you have," Ray agreed cheerfully. "Mad ones, probably." 

"What are you trying to say?" 

"Nothing, nothing! It's a figure of speech. I was not in any way impugning your state of mental health or-" 

"Lighten up, Mustache. I'm just kidding around." And then Mick chortled. Not a laugh, certainly not something so frippery as a giggle, and louder than a chuckle. No, it was definitely a chortle and Ray added that to the store of, 'surprising stuff that comes out of Mick's mouth'. It got longer every day. 

"I knew that," he said. He totally did not know that. 

By week four Ray was begging for a break. "We've eaten three greasy meals in less than a day," he said. "I think I might bust a gut or something." 

"Lightweight," said Mick, but agreed to give them a few hours grace. 

"Too much red meat gives you cancer!" Ray called after him as he headed back to quarters. "Maybe don't have a burger next time." 

"It ain't the cancer that'll kill me," Mick called back and then was gone. 

Ray shrugged. Time to go check the detector. No point spending weeks hanging out at the diner if the equipment failed at the final hurdle. Maybe first he'd go get a nice peppermint tea. 

"Doctor Palmer, I wonder if you have factored in that the date next Sunday is December 25th?" 

"I had not." Christmas? Already? Ray felt caught on the hop even though it wasn't technically his Christmas. At this point he wasn't sure where his Christmas actually _was_. Was it waiting for him in 2016? Or did he have to skip years to make up for the ones he'd spent stuck in the 50s? 

"I didn't get anyone anything," he said, and meant, "This is what makes my brain hurt. Give me quantum physics or bio-engineering or dwarf star technology and I'm on it. Ask me where I exist in time and I've got zip." 

Gideon paused before her reply. "I don't think that you need to," she said with the same bright efficiency she always used. "I do believe the Motorcar Diner will be closed, however. Shall I time our next jump for the following week?" 

"New Year's Day? Are they open?" 

"Apparently so." 

"Then, yeah, sure." 

The Motorcar Diner obviously held firm to the Twelfth Night principle in that all decorations were still very much in place when Ray and Mick showed up on New Year's Day. There was no holly in Norma's hair, though, and she looked a little rough around the edges, propping herself up against the counter. 

"Hi, fellas," she said, raising her hand in greeting without shifting. "The usual?" 

Ray raised his eyebrows. Week four and they already had a usual? It usually took him a minimum of six months and a whole bunch of, "No, half-fat, no sugar, not full fat, three- You know what? Never mind. I'll just drink this." 

"Thanks," said Mick. 

Ray ahemmed politely into a fist. 

"You getting sick on me?" 

"About that burger?" 

Mick glared. "If I want a burger, I'll eat a burger." 

Ray held up his hands, backing towards their usual booth. "Hey, it's your funeral. Which I'm hoping to not attend, if this matters at all." 

With a snort, Mick turned back to Norma. "Hold the cheese," he said. 

Ray weighed this up. It was a start. 

Just as Norma pushed herself off the counter and reached for her pad, the door opened and Lisa rocketed in. 

"Happy Nooooooo Years!" she declared, and threw herself at Mick's legs. Mick looked over at Ray, helpless pleading written across his face. Ray grinned, leaving him to it. 

"Ah, and to you too?" Mick managed, gingerly patting the girl on the top of her head. She showed no inclination to detach herself, however, and Ray was enjoying himself way too much to assist. 

Then a whirlwind burst through the door and took charge, peeling Lisa away and stopping her before she could veer off and throw herself on Ray next. 

"Lee Lee, c'mon! You can't be talking to strangers, it's not safe." 

"Well, technically we're not strangers," said Ray, choosing to ignore the warning look Mick shot his way. "By which I mean we've all been here this past month so it's not like she's never seen us before." 

Leonard's glare he did wilt before, however. Obviously this had always been his superpower. "But, yes, he's right, little lady," he continued, squatting down to get on Lisa's level. "You should only talk to grown ups you know. And cops. You can trust cops." 

Above him, Leonard gave a scornful laugh and Ray gave an internal wince. 

Lisa considered him with grave, big eyes. "What's your name?" 

"R-Renard," Ray stumbled. "My parents were French. I'm Renny for short." 

"Hi, Renny for short," said Lisa, not quite landing the 'r' and sticking out a hand. Ray took it and they shook with solemn sincerity. "Now I know you." And with that she threw her arms around his neck, hugged him tight and yelled, "Happy New Year!" so loudly that he was pretty sure his hearing was permanently damaged. 

"She's not so great with the stranger danger concept, is she?" Ray said, looking up at Leonard, who now seemed resigned to being ignored. He shook his head. 

"Gonna be a handful, I reckon," said Mick, moving past to sit down. "Give the kid back, _Renny_ , she's got pancakes to eat." 

"Oh!" Lisa let go immediately and backed off, colliding into her grandpa, who'd come in midway through this tableau. "Up!" she said, lifting up her arms. 

The old man threw a mock long-suffering look Ray's way. "And here I was thinking I was your special guy," he said, picking her up and pretending to steal her nose. But no, you got to go hug every other man in sight. What a life!" 

Lisa giggled, and Ray stood, brushing down his pants by habit. 

They broke out the cards, but neither was paying much attention and it took a few false starts to get going, each round lasting longer than it needed. One booth across a boy, his sister and grandpa were horsing around, having fun. They were being a family. At least, they were being the kind of family that Ray had always dreamed of. Where there was love and pride that wasn't pinned to achievements, where there was food and conversation and no one hid behind a paper or a business meeting excuse. Maybe Mick was thinking the same thing: his life had been no bed of roses. 

He found himself feeling pathetically grateful that Leonard had even had this much. That as bad as things were going to get, he'd known this: that he had a place where he'd belonged. That had to be better than nothing, surely? 

The detector did not flicker. 

Week five: nothing. Lisa stood on the bench and stuck her head over Mick's shoulders as they were playing cards. 

"Whatcha doin'?" she sing-songed. 

"Playing cards." 

"Oh. Okay," she said, and slid back down onto her own side again. 

Mick pressed his lips tight together and whupped Ray's ass at Gin. Again. 

Week six: nothing. Lisa demanded paper and crayons, which Norma produced with a flourish like she'd been waiting to be asked this whole time. Ray won the first game of Gin. 

"Luck," said Mick. 

They were halfway through the second when Lisa stuck her head over Mick's shoulder again. "You have pretty hair," she said. "I drawed this for you. Here." She thrust out her paper, covered in multi-coloured scribbles. It was possible to interpret a couple of them as actual shapes if you were, perhaps, involved in some sort of substance abuse, but mostly it was just random squiggles and lines. 

"Um. Thanks?" Mick took the paper. 

"That's very pretty, Lisa," said Ray. "You're a really good artist." 

"Thank you, Renny. You a kind person." With solemn dignity, Lisa rested one hand on top of Mick's head. Mick looked like he was going to stroke out. Ray dug his nails into his thighs to keep from laughing. 

"You are welcome. Will you draw me a picture sometime?" 

"Sure!" Lisa agreed. Then her pancakes arrived and she vanished. 

Ray won all but one of the rest of the hands. 

"I was distracted." 

"Mmhmm." 

"I think Snart's kid sister might, you know…" 

"Have a crush on you? Yep!" 

"I'm going to kill you." 

"How is this _my_ fault?" 

Mick narrowed his eyes. "I'll find a way," he said. 

Much later, when Ray had need to visit Mick's quarters, he saw the picture Lisa had drawn tacked up on the wall. 

Week six, and still no signs on the detector. 

"Gin!" declared Ray. 

There was a scrabbling, creaking sound and then Lisa was there again, this time hanging half over the bench. Mick put out an arm to steady her. 

"Why you keep saying chin?" she demanded. 

"Chin?" 

"Noses're better than chins. You can steal them. Do that." 

"Do what?" asked Ray, slightly confused. Did she want them to steal her chin? 

"Say nose!" 

"Nose?" 

"Not now! When it's chin time!" 

Ray blinked rapidly at Mick. What was chin time? 

"Get with the program, Mustache. New card game. It's called Nose. Get it?" 

Light dawned. "Ohhhh. Yes. Nose it is. Lisa, do you want to help M-my friend?" 

"Yes, please!" 

"Dirty pool," muttered Mick, but changed his mind when Lisa changed the rules to suit whatever meant they could win and yell, "Nose!" 

By the end of the game, Leonard had come over to lean on the end of the bench Ray sat on. "She cheats," he said, as if Ray hadn't already realised that sixty times over. "And she'll always get away with it too because she's so cute." 

"Gotta love that about her, right?" said Ray. 

Leonard shrugged. "That and everything else." He looked over at his sister and Ray saw the most naked expression Len's face had ever worn, brimming with so much love that it almost hurt to look at. To know that, slowly but surely, that open emotion would be shut down, boxed away and buried in the deep freeze. 

He forced himself to look at his cards, spreading them out in a fan on the table. "Nose?" he volunteered. 

Lisa and Mick looked at each other. "Nah!" they said. 

"I give up," said Ray. "Lisa, you are World Nose Champion." 

"What do I get?" 

"To keep your nose," said Mick. "Today." 

Lisa wriggled backwards until she was just a pair of eyes and a riot of hair. A small hand stole up and stroked Mick's wig. "Okay," she agreed. "Today." 

Week seven, the decorations were finally down, leaving the Motorcar strangely bare. Custom was picking up, though, and the place was busier than ever. Mick settled for hash browns and eggs over easy, hold the bacon. Ray said nothing. He was already starting to bug Gideon by asking for updates on their blood cholesterol levels each time they went back to the Waverider. His whole life was now eat, workout, eat, workout, maybe catch a couple of hours sleep then workout some more. All those dinners and never breakfast. It was like Narnia all over again. He would have killed for a fruit plate. 

"I play!" said Lisa, hauling her leg over the top of the bench before her grandfather could catch hold. 

"Whoa, there!" said Mick, whose ear she'd taken hold of for balance. 

"Oh, man, I'm so sorry," said the grandfather. "Lisa, come back here, honey. Leave them alone. Once was fun, but I'm sure they have better things to do than play with you." 

Lisa drew in a shuddering breath and squeezed her eyes tight shut. Mick shot Ray a look of horrified alarm. 

"No, no!" Ray stepped in, hurriedly. "It's all good here, I promise. Look, how about we all play Go Fish until your food gets here, huh?" 

"If you're sure you don't mind?" 

"Nah, come on over. The more the merrier!" 

Lisa gave a little cry of delight, hauled her other leg over and half-slid, half-tumbled herself right into Mick's lap. Mick shot another look over at Ray, this time of despair, kicking him under the table for good measure. Ray shrugged and then Leonard sat down next to him. Well, clearly he had not thought this through at all. Ray found himself kicking Mick right back. Another fine mess. 

"M-Maurice here will team up with your sister. You okay on your own or do you want to team up with me?" Ray shuffled the cards with practised ease. 

Leonard held out one small, pale hand for the pack, which he then proceeded to shuffle like he'd been born in a casino. 

"Solo. Got it." 

"No offence, mister," said Leonard, giving him a sideways glance. "You're talking to the Grade One Go Fish champion. I got a certificate and everything." 

"That so?" 

Leonard shrugged. "Tossed it. Hold 'em or bust." 

Ray opened his mouth and then closed it again. He settled for a solemn nod and a grin over the kid's head at grandpa as Leonard dealt the cards. 

Nothing on the detector. 

"You don't think we're messing it up, do you?" he asked Mick as they walked back to the ship. 

"How do you mean?" 

"I mean, we're changing time. Snart never met us in his past. We never taught his kid sister how to be a card sharp. Maybe we've gotten too close, screwed up what was supposed to happen." 

"Us? Screw something time-related up? That's a brand new situation we've never met before." 

"Yeah, yeah, Mr. Deadpan, I know. We never met a time problem we didn't screw up six ways from Sunday, but this one...it _matters_." 

"Guess we just wait and see." 

What else could they do? "I guess we do." 

" _Maurice_?" said Mick. "What, you couldn't have gone with Mitch, or Murdoch, hell, or Maverick? You had to go pick Maurice." 

For the next few weeks nothing happened. Nothing on the detector, that was. The card games became a regular feature. Ray had taken the time to come up with a backstory for Renny and Maurice. He was pretty proud of it, actually, but Mick had refused to even glance at the cheat sheet Ray had prepared. 

"Even the best improv troupes need practise!" Ray had called after him, picking up the paper Mick had let drift to the floor. "And prompts! You'll be sorry!" 

But there was no need to use them. Details from both sides were kept to a minimum. They were ships that passed in the bright striplight of noon. It was probably for the best. No point giving Snart more potential points of confusion. 

And then, finally, when Ray had almost lost count of the weeks, it happened. 

The food had come quickly, no time for a game of cards. Ray noticed that Leonard wasn't as attentive to his sister as he always was. He was staring out of the window, barely picking at his fries. It was like they'd slipped back in time to the first time they'd come here. 

"You okay, kid?" asked the grandpa. 

Leonard dragged his head around as if it were too heavy for his neck to hold. "It's her birthday," he said. "I didn't forget." 

"I-" 

"Momma's not coming back, is she?" he burst out, not allowing his grandpa to finish. "Not today, not ever." 

Once again Ray watched as the old man reached for Leonard's hand. This time, Leonard snatched it away, leaving him stranded. 

"Leo." 

Leonard scowled. 

"Lenny. Lenny, nothing lasts forever. You gotta take care of your own, whatever it takes." 

Leonard, jaw set tight, turned his head to look at Lisa, motoring through her pancakes, oblivious to what was happening right next to her. She had a ring of chocolate around her mouth from her hot cocoa. Leonard took a napkin from the holder and wiped her face with it, ignoring her attempts to wriggle free. 

"What?" he said, crumpling up the napkin and dropping onto his plate alongside his uneaten fries. "Like Pop?" 

Ray caught the glimmer of green underneath his coat. Who needed decorations now? This thing was lighting up like Christmas. He kicked Mick. 

"What did you do- Oh!" said Mick, catching on. He started humming loudly. Ray stared at him. How was this the time to break into song? Mick mugged something that Ray could interpret as either, "I need the bathroom right now or, I am covering up for you, you goof." He chose to go with the latter, not least because he realized the dull whine he was hearing was not tinnitus, but the containment unit warming up. 

It was all over in a minute, the echo trapped with the minimum of fuss. 

"Check, please!" called Mick. 

They left earlier than usual and Lisa called out, "Bye bye, fishie guy!" Mick looked at Ray, then at Lisa, then back at Ray. 

Ray shrugged. "Do what you gotta do," he said. 

Mick strode over to the booth, bent down and kissed Lisa on the top of her head. "Bye bye, Nosey," he said, waving his fingers in front of his face and then showing them to her, thumb stuck through the first two. "Got yours," he said. "Give it you back sometime." 

"Heyyyyyy," said Lisa, with a pout that was more of a smile. 

Leonard stared out of the window and didn't even register them as they walked past. 

"Poor kid," said Ray. 

"Which one?" 

Ray blinked. "I never even- Will she be okay?" 

Mick shrugged, set his jaw and walked on. 

***

"You're not gonna like this one," Mick said, appearing in the doorway just as Ray hit mile five on the treadmill. An open beer swung between two fingers. 

"Why not?" 

"Because you're gonna have to stand and watch Snart getting beaten to within an inch of his life, is why not." 

Ray stopped dead, grabbing the side rails and remembering to move his legs just in time before he flew off backwards. He hit the off button, forgoing his usual gentle warm down. "I have to do _what_?" 

"Snart's first day in juvie, he used his smart mouth on the wrong people. He got jumped. Would have gotten a shiv in the guts too, but I punched the guy out. Punched the rest out while I was at it." 

Ray must have looked confused because Mick continued, "You gonna fight that's okay by me, but you do it fair and square. You've seen the kid. He wasn't much taller by the time he hit fourteen. Smallest in the place with the biggest mouth and no survival skills. Not for on the inside. No fair, no fight." There was a vague hint of a smile at one corner of his lips. He paused, and then shook his head, the proto-smile vanishing. "So I saved his skinny ass and that was that." 

"That's almost sweet," said Ray, trying hard not to think about what it all really meant. 

Mick growled. 

"One small problem, though. Two, actually. First, I really do not want to watch anyone get beaten to within an inch of their life, let alone my- let alone an erstwhile, and hopefully a renascent, colleague. Second, how am I supposed to get into a locked facility, to the specific place I need to be to witness this...crap, this _abuse_...with the equipment, without being seen by at least some of these ruffians, and, I'm assuming, any guards who can stir themselves to being in the vicinity, and then get out again?" 

"Fewer words, Haircut." 

"How the hell are we going to swing this thing?" 

"Ah," said Mick, raising the beer bottle to his mouth and swigging it down. "That, I get. I got one solution for you." He looked up towards the ceiling. 

"Oh, no," said Ray. "Don't say air vents." 

"Air vents," said Mick. 

They'd considered going in the old, trusty exterminator route, but Mick had pointed out that no one in authority there gave a monkey's left tit if there were rats in the walls, so that had put the kibosh on that idea. That left stealth. Ray only liked stealth when he was shrunk down to the size of an ant or smaller, but it wasn't like there was any other choice. 

Gideon, efficient as ever, delivered them up the blueprints. The juvenile correctional facility was a large, flat-roofed, two-storey complex out in the middle of nowhere, split over two areas: east and west. Males were housed in the east area, and Mick navigated them through the maze of offices, cells and pods to pinpoint exactly where the attack happened. 

"Hmm, that could be a problem," Ray said, studying the diagrams with care. "Look. The ventilation shaft is up here-" he tapped the hologram to zoom in, "-but the fight happens down _here_. The pod is the whole height of the building. We've never been that far from an echo before. I don't know if I'll be able to detect it, and even if I can I might not be able to trap it." 

"Good point." Mick folded his arms and stared at the blueprints. "Okay, the way I remember it, everyone was either watching or beating on Snart." 

"Even the guards?" 

"Out back taking a smoke break. They weren't exactly dedicated to their profession." Mick's nostrils flared. "We had our own laws." 

When Ray was fourteen, he had been taking college classes and thinking up new and inventive ways of making Sydney's life hell. The worst choice he'd been facing was whether he was going to study for an engineering degree first or swing by astrophysics instead. It _felt_ like he'd lived a life, but sometimes he wondered if he had lived at all before he lost Anna. Before he found the Atom. 

"What's with you?" Mick sounded suspicious. "You're not babbling." 

"I…" No, come on, Ray, _learn_. He bit back the unwanted sympathy. "So what do I do?" 

"There's an exit point here." Mick marked it on the hologram. "Let the bastards get into the swing of it and then get out. You won't miss the yelling. I figure you can make it down the stairs unseen if you need to. We'll put you in a nice jumpsuit so you can blend in." 

"I was thinking black kevlar." 

"Think again." 

So it was clad in an orange all-in-one that Mick lowered Ray headfirst into the vent exit on the roof. The jump ship was parked a few meters away, cloaked, and Mick's job was to have her ready to move should things go south. Ray had already gone down for a first pass, shrunk down in his Atom suit, removing any obstacles, using a phosphorescent marker to mark the exact path he had to take. He'd loosened the screws on the opening he had to leave by. It was some way off the ground. Ray hoped that his upper body workouts were going to be enough to get him back up there without drawing attention to himself. 

"You know," said Ray, voice bouncing off the metal walls and reverberating weirdly in his head, "it seems unfair that you get to hang out in the ship and I get to crawl through tubes to witness attempted murder." 

He found himself jerked to an abrupt halt, midriff wrenched by the tug of the harness. "Not me who came up with that fancy equipment, was it? Besides, I witnessed it the first time, didn't I? Once is enough." 

"Oh, man, I'm sorry." And the fact he'd still managed to put his foot in his mouth in this enclosed space just proved how damn good he was at it. He dropped sharply the remaining foot or so to the base of the exit vent, landing on his left elbow, numbness and tingling shooting along the length of his arms to his fingertips. "Ow, not funny, funny bone!" he complained. "I guess I deserved that." 

Somehow Ray made it without further incident to the required vent opening, despite being sure each echoing sound he made would lead to his imminent discovery. All was quiet for a few minutes, his breathing sounding too Darth Vaderesque for comfort. Then the noise began: a raised voice here, a harsh laugh there. It escalated quickly to jeers and catcalls, and the sound of pounding footsteps on the stairs. Even if he'd wanted to, Ray's fingers could not have kept still. With haste he flipped out the magnetic screwdriver he had attached to a wrist holder and took the screws out the rest of the way. Sliding the grate underneath himself, he inched over it, peering out to check the coast was clear. 

"What the fuck?" said a startled man in cargo pants and a stab vest, staring up at him. Obviously, one of the guards was a non-smoker, but still an apathetic monster who couldn't have found it in him to care less about the sounds of an escalating fight that was happening right under his nose. 

"I don't have time for this," muttered Ray, and reached down, grabbing the guy by the shoulders and using him as leverage to pull himself out of the duct, executing a flip that landed him in front, facing the wrong way. 

Before the guard had even had a chance to respond Ray spun on his heel and landed him a facer that rocketed his head back into a wall with a sickening crack. The guard's eyes rolled upwards as he slid down the wall, unconscious. 

"Night, night," said Ray, unceremoniously dragging the body into the nearest cell and shutting the door behind him. "Sleep tight." 

Quickly, he refocused his attention on what really mattered. He shucked his backpack, unzipping and hauling out the detector and containment unit. He switched them on as he moved toward the wire railing that separated the landing from the communal area below, crouching down to look through them. There was a faint flicker on the screen, but nothing solid enough for Ray's comfort. The view of the fight below may have been obscured by the netting, a mess of orange in a rough and ready circle, but the sounds came through loud and clear. The crack of bone meeting bone, the dull thud of leather on flesh. Ray's skin crawled as his imagination let him see Leonard's face covered in blood, the defiance fading from his eyes. Hold 'em or bust. For a second he was paralyzed, and then he shook himself awake. He could feel his feelings later, they were on a clock, and sometimes a save didn't look like a save. 

He kept low, crab-walking along the hallway until he hit the stairs. Keeping one eye on the detector screen and one on the melee, he slid down stair by stair, until he was about halfway. Then he saw him tearing his way through the crowd, hair in a stark buzzcut and shoulders broader than when they'd dropped him back home after his short stay at the Refuge, but the same kid nonetheless: Mick. Ray froze, letting go of the containment unit and grabbing the stair rail, staring down into the fray. 

It could have been Moses parting the Red Sea, the way the onlookers tumbled left and right as Mick shoulder-barged or flung them out of the way, heading for the central knot of malefactors. "Pick on someone your own size," he roared, and Ray was so busy cheering him on he almost missed the detector lighting up. 

"Shit," muttered Ray, reaching behind him to pick up the containment unit. He missed, grazing it just enough to send it off balance, toppling off the stair onto the one below. Ray shot out his hand to stop it, but momentum had already taken it forward, crashing it down another few steps before it came to rest. 

"Shit, shit, shit!" Ray stumbled after it, picking it up. It rattled. Ray's heart sank. "No, no, no, please, no." 

"What?" 

"Containment unit might be broken," Ray whispered, running his eyes expertly over the machine. He pressed the on button. Nothing. "And we're seconds away from manifestation. This could be...problematic." 

"Just fix it and go around again. The echoes loop, you said." 

Ray shook his head, trying to control his runaway heartbeat. "This is a one time deal. We can't risk meeting ourselves and setting up a paradox." The detector was worryingly active now, and Ray hauled the side of the unit off, scanning for a fix. Nothing stood out. 

"I can't-" 

"Raymond, you got this. You have to." 

"Right, right. I got this." Ray squared his shoulders. Mick was right, he had to. There was no choice. 

The waves were practically converging now. It was now or never. Then suddenly something caught Ray's eye. "Aha!" He reached into the unit, expert fingers neatly reattaching a loose wire. Immediately the unit powered up. Ray pressed the controls for the intake chamber. Each second he had to wait to see if the dials moved seemed to last forever, the shouts from the fight receding into the distance. 

"Haircut?" 

"Wait." 

" _Ray_?" 

" _Wait._ " 

It was taking too long. Something else must have gone wrong. Ray prepared to move, though his legs felt like lead. 

And then a flicker, so small Ray could have imagined it. But no, there it was again, moving steadily upwards from zero. They had him! The dial hit red and, with shaking fingers, Ray switched to active containment hoping like hell that this too would hold until they got back to the Waverider. 

"Don't leave me hanging." 

"It's okay, Mick. I think it's gonna be okay." 

Somehow Ray found himself back in the vent, moving as smoothly and slowly as he could to avoid jolting his fragile cargo. He rounded a corner and found himself face to face with another occupant of the vent. A large, black, furry occupant that seemed to show no signs of moving. 

"Ah!" 

"You good?" Mick's voice had a sharp edge. 

"No. Yes. I was startled. By a rat. A big one." Ray tried to give it a taste of its own beady eye, but it appeared to afford him nothing. The rat still did not move. 

"I like rats." 

"Duly noted." Ray stared some more at the rat. The rat stared back. 

"Shoo!" he said, with an attempted flick of his hand. If rats could exude contempt, Ray was pretty sure this one was doing just that. He frowned. "Come on, Ray," he told himself. "You went up against Damian Dhark, you went up against Vandal Savage. You can't be defeated by vermin, you have a job to do." 

"It'll only eat your face if you die in there." 

"Helpful. Thanks, Mick." 

"You're welcome." 

Ray closed his eyes. The backpack pressed down on him, an insistent reminder that stealing a time machine didn't stretch time into infinity. Seconds were as important as they had always been. He opened his eyes, set his jaw, and kept moving. 

***

The Freeport warehouse stakeout had come up empty, the wailing sirens and blue lights scattering the new thieving partners in opposite directions while Ray and Mick melted back into the darkness. 

"The ring," Mick had said. "If it wasn't the fuck up, it was the ring." 

"What ring?" 

"We hauled ass before we could finish the job, yeah?" 

"Well, yes. Only move you could have made unless you wanted to get nabbed by the fuzz." 

Mick glared. 

"Sorry. So. Ring?" 

"So we grabbed a fistful of cash before we split. Snart spent his share on that pinky ring he always wore. Said it was to remind him that sometimes screw ups happen to the best of us." Mick snorted, and looked sideways at Ray. "Guess he knew you were down the line." 

"I'm rising above you," Ray said. "Like when Sydney poked me with literal sticks. Where's the store? What's our timescale?" 

So that was how Ray found himself loitering outside a jewelry store on West 2nd, watching Snart try on a selection of pinky rings, Mick safely stashed out of the way on the other side of the street, ready to pull backup if needed. Ray knelt, pretending to tie his shoelace, unzipping his backpack enough to access the detector and containment unit. Flickers came and went across the screen and then the lines went wild. Ray jerked his head up, seeing past the rows of watches and signet rings to where Snart stood, back to the window, hand splayed in the air in front of him. Slowly he curled his fingers into a fist. Ray looked down and initiated the containment sequence. The dials moved. Another one down. He switched it off. In the short time it had taken to collect the echo, Snart had already deposited a wad of cash on the counter. 

Ray had just enough time to zip the equipment safely away in his backpack and pull his cap down low over his eyes before Leonard turned around and headed out of the store. The sensible course of action would have been to keep his eyes on the floor, avoid the risk of being recognized, but without realizing he'd even made the decision, Ray found himself staring through the window and looking straight at Snart's face. 

It wasn't a little kid's face anymore, not even a cocky adolescent cocoon, gestating the bitterness and distrust that would one day form the man. No, it was Leonard's face, rounder than Ray was used to, maybe, less hardened, but the same arresting, too handsome for Ray's own good, Leonard Snart. Not his Leonard, not yet, but it was a twisting punch to the sternum, all the same. A spreading, burning, nauseating sensation strong enough to make him stagger and reach for a chair he wasn't going to find. 

Ray bit hard on his lip to stop himself calling out. What could he say anyway? _Hey, you there, we kind of met each other, but you don't really know me yet, and when you do you'll either be fucking me or frustrated by me or both at the same time. Hi. I miss you. Come back._

Oh, but he was screwed and not in the good way. How had this even happened, that their twisted version of fuckbuddies had gotten so far from any beaten path Ray knew that no amount of Orienteering or Wilderness Survival badges could save him now? This thing--this unnameable, ungovernable _thing_ \--went deeper than he'd realized. Ray had let himself believe that he'd started this because of guilt: guilt that he'd allowed Mick to talk him out of dying at the Oculus in the first place, that it had opened the door for Snart's sacrifice. 

But that wasn't it, was it? Sure, Snart had an undeniable magnetism that got Ray all hot and bothered, but there was more than that. More than the heady mix of hormones and neurotransmitters that his subconscious had dipped a finger into and declared, _well, kid, you always did like a bit of a rogue._ So maybe Leonard was all surface sarcasm--if the surface went most of the way to the center--and maybe there was no other choice he'd felt he could make with the life he'd led, but there was a deep vein of caring he'd never been able to excise. For all it was buried beneath at least several tons of bullshit, Ray saw it. Snart cared about the team, cared about Ray even though he'd never admit it, trusted Ray even when he'd let his own emotions carry him into making shitty choice after shitty choice. 

And what else could Ray do but love him for that, body chemistry be damned? If that didn't make him fucked six ways from Sunday then he had no idea what would. 

"You okay? You look like you're gonna puke." 

"Considering it." Ray glanced over at Mick across the street, who was frowning with something that looked almost like concern. He gave himself a mental thwap--now was not the time for tragicomic revelations of feelings for a deatomised teammate with benefits. Was there ever a time, really? The bell rang as Snart opened the door. Ray swiveled on his heel. "I'm good. Let's move." 

He made it a couple of strides before he heard, "Hey! Do I know you?" from behind him. He squared his shoulders and kept on walking. 

The voice hardened. "I said, do I know you?" 

Ray gulped and froze. He half-turned, the cap keeping his face in shadow. He put on his best Texas drawl. "I don't think so, pardner." Fuck, fuck, the "pardner" was overselling it, why didn't he ever learn? 

"You sure? Are you following me? Are you a cop? You have to tell me if you're a cop." 

"I'm not a cop," said Ray, forgetting the Texan until the last word and turning it into some sort of weird slide into Vowel Town. 

Snart frowned, fidgeting with something on his pinky finger. Start as you mean to go on, Ray figured. "Okay. But I don't know you? You seem awfully familiar." Leonard's tone was sharp, but without the burned in irony that Ray was used to. The lack of italics made him sound almost soft. Ray wanted to reach out and bottle it. 

"Get the hell out of there, Raymond," said Mick's voice in his ear. "Don't mess with the timeline or we could be up time creek without a time paddle." 

Ray shook his head, stuffing his fists into his pockets to stop his fingers twitching towards Leonard to touch him somewhere, anywhere. "I'm sure I'd remember such a fine young man," he said. "Have a good day, y'all." He nodded, turned and walked away as fast as he could without breaking into an actual run. 

"I think I might do that puking now," he muttered as he cleared the block, putting a hand to his chest as if he could press his heart back into a normal rhythm. 

"Save it for someone who cares." 

"You know you do," said Ray on autopilot, when what he really wanted to say was, "Oh, hey, it turns out I fell in love when I wasn't paying attention and I'd like my money back." 

This was all going so well. 

***

"There's nothing here." 

"Whadda you mean?" Mick leaned over and poked the detector in Ray's hands as if that would somehow spark it into life. Ray frowned and edged it away. He might as well switch it off for all the good it was doing them. He put it next to the containment unit, slowly and carefully lining the two up so that their edges matched with the overhang of the skylight. The uniformity of it soothed something in him that had been ruffled up by the negative response. 

"Haircut. I asked you a question." 

Ray blinked, tucking his hands into his armpits. He'd almost forgotten what they were talking about. "I mean there's nothing here. No shadow." 

Mick looked down through the skylight to the silently moving figure of Snart below as he removed the statue from the plinth and placed it with care in a foam-padded case. "Huh. I would have sworn- This was his biggest score. He bragged about it when we br- when he dissolved our partnership. Said he'd gotten along fine without me before and he could do it again." 

There was an edge to his voice that Ray charitably chose to read as anger instead of pain. He shrugged in what he hoped was his best consoling manner. "I guess maybe Snart's priorities changed." 

"How?" 

Ray shrugged again. "The Leonard who died, was he the same guy who joined the team?" 

Mick shook his head. "He'd have sacrificed every last one of you twice over before taking himself out." 

"Right. But at the same time, he _wasn't_ a different person. Everything that he was was still there, just...in a different order. Being on the team, being a _legend_ , it gave him the chance to use his talents for good, and he took it. He was always leave no man behind, right? But maybe what changed was why. Maybe getting away clean with the perfect score meant something different in the end. Maybe he let this one go." 

Mick scowled, but it didn't come close to the top of his scowl rankings (top place forever claimed after he'd been dragged kicking and screaming from Star City in 2046). "Idiot." He pointed down at the now empty room. "That was a thing of beauty. What's to let go?" 

Ray had no answer for that, so he said, "Let's get out of here," and swiveled towards the cloaked jump ship across the other side of the roof. 

"Right behind you," Mick replied at the same time as a too-close voice called, 

"CCPD! Put your hands in the air and get on your knees!" 

"Not on your life!" Mick yelled, and then Ray heard the crackle of electricity and Mick roaring, "Run, Raymond!" 

He looked back over his shoulder in time to see Mick, wordlessly bellowing, crash to the ground, body shaking violently as the tazer wires buzzed and hummed with life. The sensible thing to do was to get the hell away and take his time to plan a rescue. So, naturally, Ray turned, shifted gear, and ran straight at the cop. 

He never saw the rubber bullet that took him down, but the crack of his head against the concrete roof he felt all right, the sharp, jarring pain setting his whole body on fire, burning his consciousness away until there was nothing left but black. 

Ray woke to a face full of green. Whether it was the color of the walls or if he just wanted to vomit he had no clue. He sat up and his head swam. Vomit first, check walls later. 

"In the can, dumbass," came a voice to his left, shoving him in the direction of a silver receptacle Ray recognised as standard jail issue. 

He half stood, half fell to his knees in front of it and threw up. It had been a long time since he'd eaten and it was mostly bile, but it made him feel a little better all the same. He straightened up and looked around, wincing in the harsh, fluorescent light. 

"Better?" 

"Well, I have a headache worse than that time I broke into my dad's liquor cabinet and drank the whole bottle of his Croizet 1928 to piss him off--it worked, by the way--and the walls are still pea soup green, but, yeah. Better." 

"Good," said Mick, and punched him in the arm. 

Ray's eyes widened. "Ow! What was that for?" 

"You were supposed to get away, you idiot. What did you think would happen?" 

"I...didn't. You were in trouble so-" 

"And now we're both in it. Nice going. You gotta stop thinking you're the white knight. You got no charger and not everyone needs saving." 

"But-" 

"Use your _head_ , for once, would you? If you got away clean you could come mount your rescue. But oh no, Saint Palmer had to shit up the joint again with his poor decision making skills." 

"You're right, I know you're right," said Ray, hating Mick for laying him bare. Hit a guy when he's down, you know? "I let my emotions get in the way of cold, hard facts: I know that. But, Mick…" Ray hauled himself to his feet and sat down heavily on the bunk next to his cellmate. He shoved his hands between his knees and stared down at them. "What's the point in getting Snart back if I lose you?" 

Ray's tinnitus screamed louder and louder in the thickening silence that followed. He kept his eyes on his hands, a little afraid that any movement might startle Mick into an unpredictable response. It had seemed a reasonable question to him, but maybe for Mick it was a step too far. Maybe he saw them as allies, not friends. For some reason that thought made Ray want to head for the can again. He swallowed it down, pasted a grin on his face and looked around at Mick. 

"Besides, I need you to fly the ship." 

He saw a flicker of something cross Mick's face. It could have been relief or indigestion, who knew with him? 

"That makes more sense. Now how about we get the hell out of here before the day shift process us to gen pop. You got the suit?" 

Ray flinched. "Let me just preface this by-" 

"That's a no." 

"Not exactly." 

"I'm no genius scientist but even I know that this is simple yes/no. Unless you're hiding a cat in a box somewhere." 

"Same place you're hiding your light under a bushel," said Ray, unable to keep the admiration out of his voice. He was discovering Mick's layers ran deeper than he'd ever suspected. "But okay. No is the current, but not definitive, answer." 

"English." 

"I've been tinkering with the suit. Let me just…" He tapped his ear, grateful that whatever had happened to him while unconscious, it hadn't involved finding and removing the comm. Ray tapped it, making a mental note to get Gideon to give him another brain scan when they got back to the ship. He'd been spending way too long in varying states of unconsciousness since he took up the superheroing business: it couldn't be good for him. He stood up. 

"Gideon, initiate the Homey Protocol." He grinned at Mick, bouncing on his toes. 

Mick stared up at him, stony-faced. 

"Maybe I'll rethink the name?" 

"Protocol initiated," said Gideon into his ear. "Good luck, Doctor Palmer." 

"Thank you, Gideon. Won't need it." 

"What's the hell is happening?" 

Ray glanced up at the high window. There wasn't much to see, only grey sky that told him he'd been out a while. "If everything is going according to plan, then the Atom suit will be here in a few seconds." 

"It's flying to you?" 

"Yep." 

"Like a _homing pigeon_?" 

"That's the idea." 

"And you couldn't have used this before?" 

"It's new. I didn't know if it would work." 

"When the hell did you have time to do that?" 

Ray put up a hand to rub his head and then remembered the bruising, dropping it to his side again. "If you must know, sleeping is not easy these days. I keep thinking about everything I could screw up." 

Mick's grunt said it all. Just in case he hadn't got it, Ray assumed, he added, "Like this." 

"Let's see what happens with the suit." 

"Okay, but-" Mick started, but didn't get a chance to finish, as the breezeblock wall of the cell imploded with a boom that seemed far too loud for the small, neat, circular hole that appeared at about waist height. In a split second the Atom suit was Ray-sized and attaching itself to him as he held out his arms. The chest plate slammed against the bruise left by the rubber bullet and Ray had to force himself not to stagger backwards. Some calibration needed, clearly. 

"Neat." 

Ray had no time to bask in this small helping of admiration as the helmet thudded closed around his head, sending shooting pains through his neck right down to his fingertips. Yep, calibration definitely required. Then the familiar surge of strength as the suit powered up around him, taking its cues from the neural link between him and the HUD. The bruises didn't matter any more. He was the Atom and the suit he'd built was the final layer of skin that settled on him. 

"Ready?" he asked. 

"Get us out of here, Robocop." 

"Your wish is my command," said Ray, and lifted his hand to blast another hole through the wall, this time large enough for them to climb through. 

By now the police station alarms were blaring loud enough that they felt that they were coming from inside his head and Ray's HUD was lit up with marks moving in on their position. This was flight time, not fight time. No one had done anything wrong here, and no one deserved to get hurt. 

"Hold on," he said, threw both arms around Mick, and fired his thrusters, rocketing them both into the air. 

"Did I ever tell you how much I hate you?" 

Ray tumbled them around in a full circle. "Want me to let go?" 

"Don't make me regret hauling your ass out of the gulag." 

Ray laughed and sped on through the air. 

Back on the rooftop where they'd been caught, Ray uncloaked the jump ship and the ramp slid open. Mick was halfway up when Ray called at him to wait. 

"What?" 

"The instruments. What happened to them? We can't go without them. I don't have enough material to make new ones. Not if I'm..." he trailed to a stop. 

Mick walked back down the ramp, giving the suit a hollow tap with his knuckles as he passed. "This is when your neat freak crap pays off," he said. 

"I'm not a neat freak." Ray trailed behind him. 

"Oh, you are. Look." They rounded a corner and Mick pointed. Ahead of them, three skylights sat in a neat row, silver frames edging glass pyramids. They were identical except for the second, which seemed to have extra supports below the overhang. As they got closer, Ray recognised his equipment and remembered how he'd had to make sure they were perfectly aligned for some undefinable reason. 

"You win this time, I guess," he said, hearing his voice tinge with anxiety and hating it. He sped up and scooped up the instruments. 

"We all got our ways," said Mick. "Last one to the ship's a momma's boy." 

"You want to race?" 

"Not even a little bit." 

"You're a funny guy," said Ray, and believed it. 

***

Shattered glass fell like rain on Ray's hunched shoulders, and the roar of fire grew suddenly louder as if someone had accidentally knocked the volume slider on a phone. The heat followed swiftly, and Ray recoiled, squinting against the blaze. 

Threading through the smoke and noise Ray caught snatches of incomprehensible shouting. He couldn't make out if it was one voice or two. He turned to see Mick staring at the flames, the orange half-light casting flickering shadows across his face and making it more unreadable than ever. 

Then a harsh, unearthly sound, guttural as if pulled up from the depths of hell itself, and even without the counterpoint of Mick's stiffening shoulders, Ray would have recognized the source. Not even the worst of what the Russians had done had dragged anything even close out of him, but it burned into Ray's brain and he _knew_. 

Before he'd even had time to think, he was shoving the equipment into Mick's hands and turning to dash into the building to save his once and future friend. Or, that's what he would have done if Mick's hand hadn't been on his collar, yanking him back. 

"Ain't your place, Haircut. Ain't your time." 

Ray twisted in Mick's grasp, able only to see a narrow slice of his face, enough to see it set like stone. "Mick, I can't just _leave_ you there." 

"Can. Gotta." 

"You'll burn! I can stop it. I can save you." 

Mick shook his head. "You don't get it, kid. The fire already did that." 

Ray stilled and Mick loosed his grip, allowing Ray to turn all the way around. Mick shoved the equipment back at him. 

"I don't understand." 

"I don't expect you to." Mick shrugged, staring past Ray at the conflagration behind him. The flames lent his face an orange cast and reflected in his pupils, making his eyes appear to dance, a strange smile that didn't stretch to his mouth. 

"Ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?" Ray muttered, and added more loudly, "Tell me." 

"Fire made me. It showed me who I truly am. Don't need flawless skin in my line of work, either of 'em. Watch out!" 

A loud crash accompanied Mick's warning and he grabbed Ray's elbow and tugged him down into the shadows of a nearby wall. Ray spun on his heel. The door was wide open now, grey smoke billowing into the cool night air and spiralling away into nothingness. Silhouetted by the flickering light of the fire, two men, one dragging the other, half his body alight. 

Ray tensed, clenching his jaw. It took everything he had not to rush in, to try and help, to fix things the way he always did. But this wasn't his choice and he couldn't go riding roughshod over Mick's, even if he didn't quite get it. 

Stopping a few feet in front of the building, Snart rolled Mick over and over until the flames were out. He dropped to a knee, leaning down with his cheek near Mick's lips. Checking his breathing, Ray guessed. Apparently satisfied, he rocked back on his heels, pulled out a cell and dialed. Half of the conversation floated over: ambulance, burns, _hurry_. 

Snart pulled the battery from the cell and crunched it under his foot, scooping up the broken remnants and shoving them in a pocket. He waited, not taking his eyes off the unconscious body next to him. 

Ray's gaze flickered between the screens and the tableau in front of him. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of sirens caught on the wind and the lines began to move. The sirens got louder, and Leonard's head jerked up like a hound scenting a fox. He looked back down to Mick, sharp angles softening as he bent towards him. 

He dropped a kiss on Mick's forehead. "I know I told you back there this ain't working anymore and we're through. That still stands, but I love you, brother. Be well." 

There was no hint of the trademark drawl in his voice. It must have been the smoke gritting Ray's eyes that caused the screen to blur as he looked at it. Now. He operated the containment unit, doing it almost by rote now. When he glanced up again, Leonard was gone. The sirens were getting louder still. Ray tugged Mick's sleeve. 

"We gotta go." 

Mick shook his head, unable to respond. Smoke must have been getting to him, too. 

"C'mon, fella, oopsie." Ray gripped Mick's wrist and hauled him to his feet, not letting go until they were safely back in the jump ship. 

Mick sat in the pilot seat and pulled off his glove, staring at his hand, burn scars tracing lines and demarcating spaces like a map. Maybe that was the route to his true self, whatever that was, thought Ray. 

"You okay?" 

Mick grunted. Ray waited. He was getting to understand the different qualities of Mick's silences. This one wasn't a get-the-fuck-away-from-me one; it held a heavier, more serious weight. He didn't have to wait long. 

"Snart never told me," Mick said. "How I got out. How he saved me. It was my fault, the fire. It was supposed to be a minor distraction, but I used too much accelerant. Blew myself into a wall. Boom, unconscious. I never knew that he…" He cleared his throat. 

"I heard you escaped from the ambulance." 

"Yeah." 

"What the hell did you do?" 

"What does any cornered animal do? I found a hole and licked my wounds." 

"With third degree burns?" Ray didn't know whether to be impressed or horrified. If he had to choose, he was probably coming down on the side of the latter. 

"I'm not saying my hole didn't come with medical attention." 

"Oh. Right." 

"We good to go?" 

Ray shook his head to clear it. He was going to be smelling smoke for days. "Sure. Lucky ten, here we come." 

"We make our own luck," growled Mick. "Now sit down and shut up." 

"Love you too, buddy," said Ray and then promptly hit the deck as Mick accelerated away without warning. 

***


	4. Chapter 4

"The naming," Ray said, staring at Mick's list. "What's the naming?" 

"One day he's Leonard Snart, next he's Captain Cold. What's that thing about books?" 

"Just one thing?" 

"C'mon, Harvard, you know what I'm getting at." 

"Actually, Harvard was one of the places I turned down due to the-" Ray felt the burn of Mick's withering glare. "Books. Yes. Snart to Cold. I guess, maybe, the end of one chapter and the beginning of a new one." 

Mick's face lit up. "Exactly." 

"From common criminal to full on Rogue." Ray shaped a headline in the air with his hand. 

"Wasn't anything ever common about Snart." 

"Right. Right. Sorry. So he got the gun and then what? Named himself?" 

"Nah. That kid from S.T.A.R. Labs gave it to him after the train crash. Remember?" 

"The one in Central City a couple of years ago? With The Flash before he got name recognition?" 

"Yeah." 

"No, not really. I mean, yes, I heard of it, but my head was kind of into advanced weaponry and exoskeletons back then." Ray's chest panged. "And Felicity Smoak." 

"Whatever, man. There was a crash, there was a showdown, the kid named him Captain Cold. Snart liked it so much he came to find me." 

Ray nodded. "Fire and ice. Makes sense." 

"We ain't no fancy painting." 

This must be what being barrelled along in a herd of playful bulls feels like, Ray thought, confused. "I never said you were." He brightened. "You might say you were rekindling your relationship." 

Mick grunted. 

Ray tried again. "I said, you might say that-" 

"Got it. Don't give it oxygen to breathe." 

Ray shut his mouth with a pop. Did Mick just make a joke? Was there any way of telling? Probably best for everyone if they just moved on. 

"Okay," he said. "The creepy christening it is, then. I figure if we don't find him there, we can poke about that part of the timeline a while, there's got to be something in the birth of an alter ego, right? That's how it always works in the comics." 

"If you say so, Professor Magneto." 

Gideon displayed media coverage of the event: the aftermath--site crawling with emergency services--the confused and shaken testimonials from the passengers, the speculation about the identity of the super-powered being who had saved them all. Ray and Mick pored over it, trying to figure out where they needed to be for proximity. 

"See?" Ray pointed to a dark patch between the tracks, in a gap between carriages that were twisted and thrown on their sides. "Could be residual burn from the cold gun? There's nothing like it anywhere else." 

"Makes as much sense as anything." Mick touched the hologram and it rippled around his finger. "Plenty of cover over here too." 

He was right. The tracks ran between two high walls, lined with dense, low thickets. "Ah, bushes, my old friend," said Ray. "Let's hope they don't have thorns." 

***

It turned out that the bushes did not have thorns, but were so densely packed it was going to be difficult to move if anything went wrong. Mick hacked at a few branches, so they at least had room to breathe, but to avoid exposure they had to keep the space small. It was dark out, too, so there was only the backlit screen of the detector to keep them company, and that only served to make the area beyond its influence darker still. The birds had settled for the night, and the only sounds he could hear were the distant rush of traffic and their own breathing, Mick's slow and measured and Ray's own shallow and irregular. He tried to match Mick breath for breath: there was nothing to be nervous about, they'd been in way tighter spots than this (metaphorically, if not literally). 

It was just...They were going to be witnessing a train crash. Ray understood the science of it--the opposition of Newton's First Law by application of cold gun--but he'd seen the footage. This was some terrifying hell all those innocent people were going to be put through. And for what? So Snart could make a clean getaway? 

"Not a single fatality," he muttered. "Lucky." 

Mick turned his head sharply, his arm shifting against Ray's. "Not lucky. Snart never did anything he didn't already know the outcome of." 

"But what if something had gone wrong?" 

"It didn't. Listen, Haircut, Snart was not a good guy, but he wasn't the worst." 

"He did murder people," Ray pointed out, trying to ignore the part where his guts were attempting to pretzel themselves into a hernia. 

"Well, yeah. Mostly they were criminals like us." 

"That's not an excuse. That's not even justice. Also, _mostly_." 

Mick's arm shifted again as he shrugged. "You make your peace with that or you don't. You're here, ain't you? You want him back. You must figure his sacrifice was some kinda redemption for the bad shit he pulled." 

"You can't call murder, 'bad shit'," muttered Ray, but Mick had a point. Ray couldn't keep going round in circles on this one: murder bad, Snart bad, sacrifice good, Snart good, murder bad yadda yadda yadda. Okay. No rationalising because unknown quantity, deal with the actuality, not the theoretical equations of a life. 

"Goddam twigs," muttered Mick, obviously done with this topic. 

Ray brightened. "This is just like old times!" 

"No." 

"Understood." 

There wasn't long to wait. Even before the train reached them, Ray could tell something was wrong, the rhythmic rumble of the wheels stuttering, shot through by an ear-splitting screech. Then it was upon them in a wrenching scream of twisting metal, hot shards dropping from the sky like dying fireflies, cries and yells of terrified passengers, and then a mighty crash, as cars flung into the air smashed back into the ground and overturned, momentum extinguished, flames leaping up as if startled from the ground. And through it all, golden flashes of electricity, leaving streaks in the air like sparklers. 

Ray saw this in disjointed, flickering images through his vantage point in the bushes, a zoetrope spinning too slowly for fluid motion or panels from a comic book where what happened in the gutters between them was for the reader's imagination. This wasn't fun story time, though. This was real life. 

For a second, there was nothing. And then Ray began to hear distant weeping, and a low buzz of chatter. It seemed to be coming from behind him. Had Barry gotten the passengers over the wall? Ray nodded to himself, impressed. Closer now, the sound of gravel crunching underfoot and two voices: Barry's and Leonard's and then another-- _Cisco!_ Ray realised, forcing himself not to shift to get a view of his old friend. 

He couldn't hear the words, but the patterns came over loud and clear, the rise and fall of Leonard's voice dovetailing neatly with the wavy lines that were beginning to appear on Ray's screen. There was something different about it. Cocky, sure, but the irony was only thinly layered on top compared to the dripping-in-it Leonard he knew: like someone had skimped on the cheese on the whole Leonard pizza. 

Ray was so used to dealing with echoes by now that he managed the transition almost on autopilot, whispering to Mick, "It's weird." 

"Your hair? Yeah. What about it?" 

"Ha, ha, funny, no. The drawl." 

"What drawl?" 

"You know what drawl." 

Mick sighed. "Yeah. I repeat: what about it?" 

Ray checked the containment unit and switched the chamber to active. "It's not there. No, wait, I don't mean that. It is there, but it's like...it's like Snart 1.0." 

"So? Are we done?" 

"Yeah. We can move as soon as the coast is clear. So it's weird. Isn't it? Where did it come from, the drawl? He just got named. Maybe the whole voice thing is something he put on with the Captain Cold persona like another thermal layer under that parka of his." 

"Is this going to wind up with me getting some food?" 

"Nuh-ohhh?" 

"Beer?" 

"No." 

"Anything else I should care about?" 

"Probably not." 

"Then who cares where the damn drawl came from? You can run one of your fancy experiments on the probability of him bringing it back from the dead if you like. No skin off my nose." 

"He's not d- You know what? Never mind." 

But Ray did mind. He'd seen Leonard drop the constant italics on occasion, had been lucky enough to have had it directed at him (though orgasms may have played a larger part in that than Ray's personal charm), but he'd never considered tone of voice as armor before now. More than ever he wanted to find a chink and rip it apart, until he could finally see who Leonard Snart was, if there was something inside there that wasn't just a seed of heroism wrapped in a spaghetti ball of darkness. 

Three to go. 

***

"He froze his own father?! I mean, I know Lewis wasn't going to win any Father of the Year awards, but shooting him?" 

"Daddy dearest stuck a bomb in little sis's skull the better to make his boy dance to his sick fuck tune. What else you think he was gonna do?" 

"He stuck a- Wow. Okay. I take his point." 

"Damn right you do." 

"All right. So. Moving on. Father dead at your own hand, very Greek tragedy--the son ascending the last step to adulthood by slaying the evil tyrant. Archetypal." 

"Archie what now?" 

"I'm saying this sounds like classic anchor material. Classical, even." 

Mick waved his fingers at Ray's face. "You know, nine times out of ten what comes out of your mouth sounds like Charlie Brown's mom to me." 

"I'm sorry." Ray flapped his own hand in front of his face. "Externalization. Tell me what you know." 

So Mick did, and that was how they found themselves staring with dawning horror at a set of blueprints. 

"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" 

"If you're seeing a steel-lined corridor with only one very visible point of entry, protected by state-of-the-art tech then yes, I'm seeing what you're seeing." 

"Nowhere to hide." 

"Nope. Not even a friendly ventilation shaft." 

"Well, shit." 

"I think that about covers it." Ray's chest felt raw. This couldn't defeat them. They were so close! 

The two men stared at each other in silence for a long moment, Mick with his list clenched tight in his hand. Then he said, "Can't you go small or something sciencey?" 

"The problem isn't the size of me, it's the size of the equipment," Ray replied. "I've been trying to figure out the compression ratio post-miniaturisation, but I haven't managed to marry the numbers up. I think it might be something to do with the power draw--oh!" 

A ream of letters and numbers unfurled in his head, the same ones he'd been wrestling with since this started, shaken out of a box and falling in a pattern that this time looked like it could work. Ray turned on his heel and raced as fast as he could to his lab without disturbing the perfect equations that hovered at the corner of his vision. 

Mick yelled after him, "Is it the good kind of 'oh'?" 

Unwilling to answer in case it cost him a crucial x, Ray stuck one thumb in the air and didn't look back. 

In the end, Ray took a ride into the building on Leonard himself. The miniaturisation process had worked out exactly the way he wanted, and with Gideon's ability to print his designs to nanometric perfection, the whole process had taken way less time than it would have back at Palmer Tech. No eye-bugging magnifying glass and world's smallest tweezers required on the Waverider.He'd gotten the units as small as he could manage, but the relative size differential left him standing just over an inch high. He hoped to hell it would be small enough, or at least that Leonard would be so distracted by the need to keep his sister alive that he wouldn't notice. 

The HUD flagged up a nondescript white van pulling into a side road by the target building: three occupants. Ray zoomed in, facial recognition software flickering at the edge of his vision. There was a beep and then three faces ranged in front of him: Snart Sr, Barry, and Leonard himself. 

"Got 'em," he muttered, and flung himself off his vantage point, torpedoing straight towards them, a bullet determined to hit its mark. Barry and Leonard were manhandling a yellow janitor's cart out of the van, and Ray used their distraction to pull up short, maneuvering himself under Leonard's jumpsuit collar. It wasn't ideal, but would do for now. He clung on with both hands to the blue cloth as Leonard started to move. 

It occurred to Ray then, that this version of Leonard was almost the one he'd met, the one he'd watched upgrade from self-focused criminal to self-sacrificing hero. And that this was the closest he'd been to him since the whole Pilgrim deal and Leonard's visit to his lab. He breathed in through his nose, sharp and deep, sucking in as much of Leonard's scent as he could. It settled something inside him, like a comforter on a cold night. When had it become so familiar? So _necessary_? 

"You okay?" 

"Mmhmm," mumbled Ray, not wanting to be heard and not knowing what the hell he could have said anyway. 

There was some kind of hold up over the IDs, and Ray used the opportunity to make his way around Leonard's neck under cover of the collar and slide into his breast pocket, making his movements as small as possible, because even a laser-focused Leonard would probably notice a deadweight dropping the equivalent of several storeys. Just as he settled into a corner, he felt Leonard lunge forward, and they were off again. 

Ray's stomach swooped as the elevator shot upwards. He heard them clear the security guards, and then everything seemed to happen in a blur, Ray only able to hear what was happening immediately around him, as he concentrated on the screen in front of him. A silenced pistol, a muttered apology, the crackle of the cold gun, and Leonard offering up a time limit in a warning tone. Then the wail of alarms, Barry trying to talk his way out of dying, Lewis saying, "Shoot him, son." And through it all, Leonard's steady, calm heartbeat, until he heard, "Lisa's safe." 

Then Ray nearly dropped the detector as Leonard's heart sped, shaking the walls of his ribs as if desperate to escape. But there was no tremor in his arm as he lifted it. Ray knew what was coming. He stared at the screen, expecting to see the initial lines that foreshadowed the usual wave pattern, but no. Something was happening. A strange wave shaped like an interrupted heartbeat, barely breaking the horizontal. It was something, but it wasn't right. Ray stared harder, as if that could kickstart it into life. 

Leonard shot. 

Ray heard the dull thud of a body hitting the floor and nearly fell himself as Leonard dropped to squat beside it, his heart already returning to its steady state. 

Barry said, "Why did you do that?" 

Leonard's voice rumbled through Ray's armor, right into the center of him. "He broke my sister's heart. Only fair I break his." Ray shuddered. Somewhere, someone walked over his grave. 

"Well? Did you get him?" 

Ray stared at the screen. The strange wave, whatever it had been, was gone now, and the familiar green baseline was flat and unwavering. 

As quietly as he could manage, Ray muttered, "Um. No." 

"Whaddya mean, 'No'?" 

"You want me to run you to Iron Heights or wait for the cops?" said Barry, voice muffled through the material. 

"The latter. I wouldn't want the wind to mess with my hair. Besides, they're already on their way up here. Who am I to deprive them of a textbook takedown?" Ray felt himself tilt off-balance again as Leonard slouched backwards against the wall. He clung on. 

" _Raymond_ " 

"Sorry. I mean there was this weird thing on the detector, but it wasn't the anchor. I don't know what it was." 

"How do you not know? You built it." 

"C'mon Mick, gimme a break. You know I've been making it all up as I go along. This is cutting edge science." 

"Yeah, whatever." 

Could it have been an anomaly caused by the recalibration post-miniaturisation? Ray wondered. Was it something that was relative to the space/time positioning of the anchor? 

"Hey, Mick," he whispered. "I'm gonna stick with it for a little while. See if anything shakes out." 

Stampeding feet came up the corridor. "GET ON THE FLOOR! Oh, hey, Flash. Thanks for- ON THE FLOOR!" 

Ray braced for impact as Leonard's whole weight came down on top of him. This was all going so well. 

***

Ray realised quickly that he couldn't risk being found on Leonard, or being shoved into some repurposed evidence bag along with the rest of his clothes at intake. Luckily, the cops were the man-handling type and it wasn't too tricky for Ray to transfer himself from pocket to stab vest. 

Man-handling finished, the cops read Leonard his rights, and then they began the trip downstairs, the rhythmic jangling of shackles accompanying each step. They hit the elevators. For the first few floors everything was quiet. 

"You shot your pops? What kind of kid does that?" 

Ray read the defiance that rolled off Leonard without even having to look at him. Don't say anything stupid, he begged silently. Don't give them a reason. Dirty cop or not, Lewis Snart was once one of theirs. 

Leonard said nothing. 

"You hear me, Snart? I said, what kind of kid shoots their own father?" 

There was another long silence, and then, "He hurt my sister. He would have kept on hurting her. It's all he ever did. I'm only sorry it took me so long. I should have ended him years ago." Leonard's tone was flat, but Ray, tuned in after all his encounters with Leonard through the years, could hear the thin line of hurt threading through it. 

Ray's chest tightened. He'd been expecting bravado, or provocation, but this raw truth hit worse than any punch. It seemed to shut the cops up too, one of them mumbling something about the law of the land, but then nothing until they rolled in to Iron Heights. Well, nothing except some standard cop kvetching about canteen food, ex-wives and ungrateful kids. And that was how Ray learned that all stereotypes had to come from somewhere. All that was missing was a donut stop, and he figured that was probably more due to the lack of opportunity on the route rather than lack of desire. 

Once through the doors of Iron Heights, Ray knew the cops would be high-tailing it out of there after they'd handed over their not-so-precious cargo, and he'd have to move to stay on target. He scanned the area. Nothing but breeze block walls and sour expressions. His cop was leaning on the custody desk, which was close enough for Ray to touch, but it was smooth and right-angled, no ledges for hiding. Ray was just thinking he'd have to risk climbing down the cop, and making it across the floor to one of the vent blocks, when the intake officer shoved a set of clothes and a bag across the desk. 

"We're short-staffed," she told him. "The meta unit has us all jumping. Take this one through there and get him into blues, will ya?" 

"There better be gloves, Irene. I ain't-" 

"Purple ones, just like you like 'em. We're all out of jelly, mind." 

The cop shuddered. Ray didn't think twice before using the cover of this exchange to let go and plunge himself into the folds of the clothes. Just in time, too, as the cop picked them up and shoved them into Leonard's arms. 

"Carry your own shit, Snart." 

"Are your facilities broken _again_?" said Leonard, the drawl back in full force. "How unfortunate." 

Ray couldn't decide whether to grin or sigh. That was Snart, right there, able to piss anyone off with little more than a look. Smart as he undoubtedly was, how he'd managed to get through life without being murdered was more than Ray could understand. Maybe Leonard was some kind of human behavior genius, and knew exactly how far he could push it and with whom. It worked on Ray anyway. 

He found himself bounced around and then unceremoniously dropped onto a hard surface. A door snicked closed. 

"Wave to the camera," said the cop. "Now strip." 

There was the unmistakable snap of a latex glove against skin. Ray gulped, grateful that he couldn't see what was going on. This was not the way he'd hoped to be introduced to Leonard's ass. He took advantage of the distraction to try to figure out how could conceal himself in the blues without discovery as Leonard put them on. The material was pretty thick, and there was an undershirt. Maybe Ray could find a pocket or an inner seam. Turn ups were always a possibility, even though the thought of them made him feel seasick. Slowly, he inched his way into the thick cotton uniform. 

He never would get to choose because just then hands grabbed the blues and shook them out. Unprepared, Ray lost his grip and crashed to the floor. The world went black. 

When he woke, Ray's first thought was a panicked, "Oh, crap, I've gone blind. Again." It took him a couple of seconds to realize that he was in the same room, windowless, lightless and Leonardless. 

He sat up, checking himself over. All present and correct, including the detector and containment unit. At least something was working out. But where the hell was Snart? How was he going to get to him? What if he'd missed the echo? How would he even know? There were cameras everywhere; he couldn't exactly go big and roam the place unseen. 

His lungs caught. Had he failed? What would he say to Mick? 

Oh, shit. He tapped his comm. "Mick?" 

There was a rustle and a snort and then a, "Yeah," with at least 20% more growl than usual. 

"Were you sleeping?" 

"Were _you_? I tried to raise you, like, fifty times." 

"Um. It wasn't exactly sleeping. Listen, Mick. We have a problem." Ray laid out the issues as succinctly and as with as little emotion as he could muster, ducking his head in advance of the anticipated verbal beating. 

"So what you're saying is we could have lost him." 

Ray swallowed. Seriously, was he coming down with a chest infection or what? He rubbed at his chest, for all the good it did him through his armor. "Yes. But let's work on the assumption we haven't yet, okay?" 

"You didn't fuck up, Raymond." 

"I know I- Wait, what?" 

"It was an accident. You're a scientist, you know what those are." 

"But-" 

"It's done. Okay?" 

Ray sat up straighter. "Okay!" 

"So you got a way out of there?" 

Ray lit up the HUD and did a 360. There was a security panel by the door, red light striped across the top. Locked. What else? Then he spied it out of the corner of his eye. "Vent block." He made straight for it, flattening himself to squeeze into one of the narrow, horizontal shafts. His armor clanged as his shoulders were refused entry. 

"Nuts," said Ray, stood up, blasted the hell out of the corner of the block, and ran through the debris. 

"Nuts," he said again, looking around and finding himself outside. 

"Problem?" 

Ray sighed. "Kinda? I'm on the outside, the door's still locked on the inside. I'm gonna need another way back in." 

"I'll get Gideon to pull the blueprints." 

"Thanks, Mick, I- Wait, is that…? It is!" 

Crossing the concrete wasteland between the fence and the prison reception were Barry and an older, bearded guy in a suit. Likely Barry's foster dad, Joe, Ray figured. "No way they're not here for Snart," Ray muttered. "Mick, keep looking, but I think I found my ride." 

There was a brief pause, and then, "Good luck." 

Ray exhaled a long breath and watched the men walking nearer. Joe struck him as the best bet with the suit and all the pockets that entailed, but the guy was a detective, and Ray wasn't willing to risk his instincts by risking landing like some kind of lead lump. Calibrating his descent from flying wasn't always as smooth as he'd hoped. He let his eyes sweep further down: neatly-tied brogues and suit pants with turn ups. Great. Just what he'd always wanted. His stomach groaned in anticipation, and Ray mentally shushed it. 

It was still an operation to get on board. Ray positioned himself so he could get behind Joe as the entrance door slowed him down, gripping hard on the heel of his shoe. Then, as Barry stated their business, he crawled as slowly as he dared up the shoe, and maneuvered himself into the turned up material. Good quality wool, Ray was grateful to note. Strong enough to take his weight. He let it cradle him, and then spend the next few second trying to manipulate the detector and containment unit while swinging side to side and rising up and down at the same time, like the worst kind of fairground ride. 

The journey was, luckily, short. Ray heard a door clunk open. 

"Snart," said Barry, even his pleasant voice taking on a harsh edge from the acoustics of the room. More breeze blocks, Ray figured. 

"Thanks," said Joe. "We can take it from here." 

"Whatever you say, Detective," a third, unknown voice said. "I'll be right outside. Holler when you're done." 

"Sure." 

The door clunked open again. There was a brief pause and Joe said, "Okay, Barry. Do what you gotta do. I'll wait over here." 

Ray checked the detector. Nothing. With the same care, he reversed his journey out of Joe's pant leg and down his shoe to the floor. Maybe he needed to get closer to Leonard. He fired his boosters, rising up until he hovered behind Joe's shoulder. It was a calculated risk: no one was looking for a tiny man in a super suit, and everyone's attention was on the exchange in front of him. 

It was a classic visiting room situation, with a wall of bulletproof glass between prisoner and visitor, phones set either side so they could talk. The only furniture on this side of the glass were old, plastic chairs set at each of the three stations. On this side, Barry sat, leaning forward, elbows on the small sill. Behind it, Leonard, two guards at his back, holding the phone receiver in one hand, the other wrapped around his wrist--as comfort or to create a potential weapon, who even knew? 

In most of the movies Ray had seen this scenario in, either the guy on the outside came to taunt the guy on the inside, or lovers, separated, pressed their hands against the glass as if they could force their touch through it by sheer power of will. Neither of those things seemed to be happening here, and Ray didn't know which he was most grateful for. 

Could he get closer? He needed to get on a surface, at least; it would be tricky for him to handle the equipment in mid air. He could hear only Barry's side of the conversation. Seemed like just small talk, nothing that made sense as an anchor. 

His best bet was one of the chairs either side of Barry. If he skirted the edge of the room and the length of the partition he might be able to make it unnoticed. The positioning of the chairs, tucked neatly under the slim ledge, meant that he should be able to stay hidden once up there, for whatever good it was going to do. 

By the time he'd made it into position, the conversation had moved on to fathers and figuring out each other's secrets. You might as well start braiding each other's hair, thought Ray, detaching the equipment with a touch more violence than was strictly necessary. Oh. Wait. And then he tuned in properly to what Barry was saying and the hairs rose on the back of his neck. 

"There's good in you, Snart. And you don't have to admit it to me, but there's a part of you that knows you don't have to let your past define you. A part of you that really wants to be more than just a criminal." 

Ray was so busy listening he almost missed it, the shifting of the lines, the spiking of the waveform. It was here. Len had anchored here. Not at the scene of the violent death of his father, but here, where Barry was refusing to give up on him, drawing light out of a dark place. This was all the proof Ray needed, empirical evidence that he was right to trust his gut when it came to Snart. He'd had faith for a while now: faith that Leonard, while he would never play the Boy Scout, wanted to do right, not for gain or recognition, but because that's who he was supposed to be given the right circumstances. But faith could be misplaced, and Leonard was practically as unknowable as any given deity on any given day. 

This, though. Thirteen places to hold on and this was one of them. Ray's chest ached. He opened up the containment chamber and drew Len in. 

***

"So what's next?" Ray hovered in Mick's doorway. 

Mick put down his beer bottle and shrugged. "Now that's where our problems start, 'cuz I got some idea, but…" 

"But what?" 

"But _that_ happened." 

"What happened?" 

"You found the echo when Allen said...what he said." Mick's face contorted as if he'd bitten down on the world's sourest candy. 

"C'mon, Mick, he was a _hero_. You knew that about him. Look at the places we've found him in so far; it had to come from somewhere." 

Mick grunted, but the sour expression lessened a little. 

"He was always that Leonard Snart. It was just he was always the other Snart, too. Layers, man, we all have them." Ray took a couple of steps inside the room trying to find a surface safe for leaning on. Not today. He shoved his hands in his pockets instead. "So, those thoughts. Care to share?" 

Mick took a swig of his beer and shook his head. "I figured maybe when he was talking me into joining this whole-" he swung his bottle in a wide arc, liquid slopping over the top and trickling down his gloved fingers. 

"Excitement, adventure and really wild things?" 

"Ex what now?" 

"It's from- You know what? Never mind." 

Mick narrowed his eyes. "The thing about you, Haircut, is you're straightforward, but not regular." 

"Am I?" Ray wasn't sure if that was a barb or a compliment. 

"Ain't a bad thing," muttered Mick. He was paying close attention to the label on his beer, so Ray figured it was safe to smile and take a brief moment to bask in the warmth, even if it was begrudging. 

Mick continued. "Thing is, now all this heroic crap is showing up, I don't know. Maybe he was lying to me when he said the only reason we were going was to be time-traveling thieves. Maybe he wasn't. But that last echo...There's not gonna be a backwards step is there?" 

"That's...Wow. That's smart thinking, Mick. So we're looking a point where he made some sort of conscious decision to...what, be good?" 

Mick snorted. 

"Okay, so not be good, but something like that? When would that- It was a long time ago for both of us, longer for you, what with the whole Chronos shenanigans." 

"Don't bring dishonor on shenanigans. That whole scene was a shitstorm. Nothing more, nothing less." 

"Good to know!" 

Mick pulled his feet off the second chair he had them propped on and kicked it so it angled towards Ray. Ray sat. 

"So not when you guys were plotting thieving greatness. What then? When he saw the spaceship? I mean, c'mon, it's a _spaceship_. That's gotta be at least a little impressive." 

"Sure, he liked it. But he's never hung around for a thing before. It's all…" Mick started to wave his bottle in the air again before thinking better of it, settling for another shrug instead. "...people and _ideas_." 

"Ideas aren't your enemy, you know. Okay, not the Waverider reveal. How about the part when he rode up on his white charger and joined in the fight against...well, you?" 

"Chronos wasn't me. And it was a cherry red, '73 Chevy." 

"Both points taken. Echo probability?" 

"Higher, I guess. But the adrenaline was high, the three of us had been in a bar fight, we were running hot. Even Cold." 

"Hmm." Ray tapped his lips with a fingertip. "Not thieves, not a thing, probably not adrenaline-fuelled havoc causing, which leaves what?" 

Mick put his bottle down on a closed crate covered in enough of his detritus that Ray figured it probably needed to be officially renamed as a table. Maybe he could get his own from the cargo bay. Ray sat up straight, eyes widening. The cargo bay. 

"What?" 

"The cargo bay." 

"What about it?" 

"Sara and her pep talk." 

Mick's eyebrows knitted together and then relaxed again. Like some mating dance of a rare breed of caterpillar, Ray thought. "You may be onto something, Raymond. But we were in the temporal zone for that whole scenario. How the hell do we jump there and find the right ship?" 

Ray flicked through the potential options, rifling his catalog of actual and experimental scientific knowledge. They could figure out how Chronos tracked the ship via temporal wave function, but then there was the problem of keeping stealth and boarding at exactly the right time. Linearly, he had a good idea of when it was, but the temporal zone screwed with linear time until it pretzeled itself into neat knots. The sequence of events was straightforward enough: leave St. Roch and 1975 long enough to effect repairs, drop back into time and immediately fly to Norway, do not land, do not pass go. 

"Oh!" said Ray. "Easy. We can do it and be back before dinner. When's dinner again?" 

Mick shook his head. "Tomorrow? An hour ago? It's all getting a little confusing up in here." 

"You're telling me. Okay, gimme an hour to go over some details and then we're good to go." 

"Go where?" 

"1975." 

***

Ray threw up after the time jump. He couldn't tell if it was because they'd leapt back a ways after a while in the almost-present, or if the nerves were getting to him. This, if it worked, was getting very close to being it. 

"Crap," he said. "Better mop that up before I head out." 

"I'll do it. You go get what we need." 

"Gee, thanks, Mick!" Ray suddenly remembered how he'd done the same for Mick after their ill-fated visit to 2046. A whole lot had happened since then, for both of them. Mick didn't throw up anymore. Probably that's what years of being a scary-ass Time bounty hunter would do to you. 

He geared up and shrank down, checking comms. "You got me?" 

"Loud and clear." 

"I'll signal you when I'm on board, but remember-" 

"Comms will drop out when you're in the temporal zone. I know. I got it." 

"And then we rendezvous in Norway. Wow. It feels like forever since we were there the first time." 

"Lot of water under the bridge since then." 

" _All_ the water. Okay. I'm set. Any last minute words of wisdom?" 

"Yeah. Don't let me kill you." 

"Which one of you?" 

"Both." 

Ray shrugged. "Fair." He launched into the air. "Gideon, open the cargo bay, there's work to be done." 

They'd landed their Waverider a safe distance from the earlier version, and as he flew, the sounds of battle grew louder, the other Waverider taking a beating from Chronos's thermite grenades. As he got closer, he saw his past self and Stein running for the cargo bay. Any minute now they'd zoom out again, Firestorm and Atom, providing air cover for the others. There wasn't much time. He sped towards the open bay door, sure that he wouldn't be noticed in the middle of a firefight, narrowly missing being torched by Firestorm as he zoomed past. 

He landed safely, aware that he was on a tight schedule. It could only be seconds before everyone was back inside. He scanned the cargo bay, recalling their positions back in the day. He spotted a crate close enough to where Leonard had been sitting to be sure he was in range for the echo, and far enough away that it was unlikely anyone would notice the crate was open. He flew over and zapped himself big again to get the thing open. It was full of foiled silver packages of what looked suspiciously like space ice cream. Seemed as good a place to hide as any. Ray picked one of the packages up and used it to wedge the lid open a crack, then he shrank down again and flew in. 

"In position," he told Mick, just in time as he and Firestorm came crashing back through, closely followed by the rest of the team, the sounds of their weapons reverberating around the crate, loud enough to make him wince. 

Ray heard Gideon say, "Professor Boardman has sustained severe internal injuries," and Hunter's reply. "Prepare the MedBay to receive Professor Boardman and get us out of here!" 

"Course heading?" 

"Anywhere but here!" 

Even at his small size, safely cushioned between the ration bars, Ray felt the jump into the temporal zone: the usual strange sensation of being stretched, elongated in a way that managed to somehow feel straight and curved at the same time; a tearing of himself from himself to meet himself. No wonder there were so many side effects. He had plenty of time to recover, though, as the cargo bay emptied quickly and stayed still, dark, and quiet for the next while. The low humming throb of the engine set up a soothing rhythm, and Ray was close to dropping off when a shard of light shot through the small gap under the lid of his crate. He sat up, quickly checking for the equipment. All good. It was go time. 

For a while, there was mostly silence interspersed with the sounds of weapons and tech repairs. The oppressive atmosphere in the room settled on Ray's shoulders like a weighted blanket. His spine went rigid. Any second now… 

A small explosion, an annoyed, "Watch it!" and they were off to the races. 

Ray heard the whine in his voice as he bemoaned the reality of their legendary status being revoked. He winced. Not cool, he told his past self. Not cool at all, you ego-driven idiot. Felicity would have punched him for being so defeatist, and she would have been right. How could he have been so proud of the concept of being a legend when he'd done barely anything to earn it yet? If he'd learned only one thing from these past few years, it was that the future was friable like good soil: plant well in the present, reap the benefits down the line. Plants couldn't grow backwards and neither could people. 

And then there was Sara, who'd been actually dead as opposed to Ray's presumed, who'd been trained as a hive assassin, to follow orders, to not question, who'd been tossed about as Fate's plaything, while Ray tinkered in a succession of labs. Sara: who warranted study for the premium grade Teflon that coated her, as unstoppable as a tsunami, as irrepressible as a rubber ball. Sara said, "I mean, if we have the power to change the world, don't you think we have the power to change our own fate?" Ray could only hope that his experiences with Sara and the rest of the team had changed him enough to deserve his place among them. 

"For better or for worse," Leonard said, and the screen lit up. 

The hypothesis had been proven: this was the crux where Leonard made a conscious decision to pivot towards the good within him. And given pivots worked around a fixed point, it made perfect sense that he would anchor here. 

For a split second, Ray hated Sara every bit as much as he admired her. No wonder Leonard had a thing for her. Who wouldn't pick the one who said, "We're better than this," over the one who said, "Might as well have stayed dead"? Ray's shoulders crawled as he drew in the echo. He'd changed, he knew that. And he knew that Leonard knew that, too. But if he didn't want what Ray was offering, and set off chasing a dream of an uncaged canary, then it wasn't as if Ray could blame him. 

Outside, the conversation changed as they prepared to return to the bridge. 

"Let's go give Rip the good news." 

"Will there be food?" 

"Wherever you are, there's food, Mick. It's your unsung superpower." 

"Oh, I like that! We could deploy you to single-handedly solve the world's famine crises." 

"Or I could deploy my foot in your ass. What's with the hair, anyway?" 

"What's wrong with my hair?" 

"What's right with it?" 

"Hey!" 

"You gotta admit, Ray, it's a little…" 

Ray touched his hand to his helmet as the voices faded away. That was just how his hair _went_. 

He only had a moment to consider his options--pout or accept--before he heard the clang of returning footsteps, and only a further moment to throw himself into the pile of rations before the lid of his crate was thrown open and a giant, gloved hand came toward him. In an instant Ray's brain was replaying _Land of the Giants_ scenarios at top speed while he froze, trying desperately to remain unnoticed. 

"Knew there'd be food somewhere in here." The hand moved about, grabbing an indiscriminate bunch of foiled packages, missing Ray by the narrowest margin. Then the lid of the crate slammed down, casting Ray into total darkness. He breathed a sigh of relief and patted himself down. 

The sigh was cut short: the containment unit was gone. 

Ray's stomach dropped. He'd designed the magnetic connections to be failsafe. Had he neglected to secure the unit after mission completion? Was he so worried about his goddamn hair? This was not good. This was very not good. 

He lit up the HUD and attempted to scan the interior of the chest. Nothing but static. Either the chest or whatever the hell the packets were made from were messing with his readings. There was nothing for it but to go diving. He took off the detector, noting its location, took a deep breath, pressed a button, and shrank. At the size of an ant he slipped easily down through the cracks in between the tight-packed rations, clinging on to seams as he went, scanning for any sign of the unit. 

About halfway down he lurched forward, hit suddenly with a wave of huge pressure on his back, pushing him down. He made a grab for the nearest packet, but missed, hurtling down the cracks, bouncing and rolling off each layer. Crap, he thought. This was it. They were dropping back into the timestream, readying for the flight to Norway and the Waverider made Concorde look like the Goodyear Blimp. There wasn't much time. 

As the effects from the time dilation lifted, Ray found himself lying on the bottom of the crate, limbs bent in ways he wouldn't have chosen if given the option. He straightened himself out, groaning. 

The comm crackled to life. "Raymond? You okay?" 

Mick. Of course, they were back in the timestream. Ray twisted his neck side to side: a twinge, nothing more. He'd had worse sleeping rough with the Eagle Scouts. 

"I'm good." 

"Mission complete?" 

Ray drew in a breath. "Well…" 

"'Well' is not the kind of opener that inspires confidence. What did you do?" Ray could hear the almost invisible thread of concern at the core of Mick's annoyance, and he winced, hating that he'd put it there. 

"On the one hand, I got the echo." 

"On the other?" 

"I...do not currently have eyes on the containment unit." 

"You lost it." 

"Not ex...yeah. I lost it. There was a situation. I thought I had secured it properly, but obviously not. But, hey! It has to be here somewhere. I'll keep looking." Ray wriggled his shoulders. Something did not feel right. Had he hurt his back after all? 

"Sure. Not like there's anywhere else it could have gone, right?" 

Ray flashed on a image of Mick's gloved hand looming towards him, and gulped. If other Mick had _eaten_ it. Crap. Literally. 

"Well…" 

" _Haircut_." 

Seriously, what had he done to his back? It felt like something was jabbing him right in the kidneys. The suit was supposed to protect him from major injuries, but what if something had shifted loose in the fall? Ray put his hand under his back and felt about for anything unusual. His fingertips met resistance, a smooth surface that he trailed along. It was about the same length as--holy crap!--Ray sat up and twisted around in one swift movement. Yes! He'd fallen straight onto what he was looking for. Well, how about that, Serendipity? 

"Oh my gosh, I got it! I fell on it!" 

"Did you break it?" 

"Did I-? Oh, crap." Ray snatched up the unit and lit up the HUD to inspect it. Text scrolled past his eye, but the only part he cared about was the green, "100% efficiency." 

"All good," he said, shoulders slumping with relief. "All good." 

"Great. Now get the hell out of there." 

"On it," said Ray, and sat down. In a minute he'd be on it. After he'd made damn sure the containment unit was fully secure and his heart had a chance to stop racing like it was trying to win the Indy 500. 

***

Later, Mick and Ray watched on the monitors as their past selves set off to Savage's nuclear missile shindig. 

"And off they go to the auction." 

"Man, that was one fucked up mission." 

Ray scratched the back of his neck. "I let Savage get his hands on my tech. How dumb do you have to be?" 

"Wanna compare lists of poor decision making? You know how you're supposed to stop touching the fire once you figure out it's hot?" 

"Guess that makes us a pair." Ray straightened up. "Hey, we're here. I could just go in and-" 

"No!" Mick's voice cut sharply through Ray's rapidly expanding bubble of excited optimism. 

"But-" 

"No. You can't fix everything. 'Sides, if you did that, you might screw this whole thing up. A butterfly craps in the wind." 

Ray deflated, but it didn't feel like the short, sharp shock of a balloon bursting, more like an air mattress being stored away. This was new, and he liked it. "You're right," he said. "We know Rip said going back to change events we already participated in would cause a paradox. Obviously, trusting his word on anything is a fool's errand, but we can't risk our mission." 

"No, we cannot. One more echo." 

Ray's stomach rolled. Oh fuck, one more. One more, and they could see if the science held together, if Ray's equations were provable, if they could put together a human being from constituent atoms. If Leonard could live again. 

"I think I'm gonna throw up." 

Mick rolled his eyes. "Not again. I'll get the mop." 

***

"That's it." 

Ray frowned, looking up from the magnifying glass he'd been squinting through. It took him a second to refocus. "I don't understand. What's it?" 

Mick waved a pad of paper under Ray's nose, the writing scored out by heavy lines. "I've been up all night. All day. Whenever we are and I can't- We already tried everywhere I could think of and we've crapped out at the last six. There's nowhere left. If Gideon can't figure it out then-" 

Ray wriggled his shoulders, trying to ease the sudden itch between the blades. He couldn't bring himself to say it either. "Mathematically it has to be possible. I've tried to make the science turn out in favor of twelve, but it won't work. Not without the thirteenth shadow. I'm sorry, Mick." He felt sick to his stomach. Mick wasn't the only one who'd been up all night: Ray had gone over the equations ten, twenty, a hundred times to try to make things line up with what they had. It was experimental quantum physics, after all, shouldn't he be able to fudge it? But no matter what he did, it never came out right. This was almost like losing him all over again, only this time with less hope. 

"So…" Mick scratched his head, looking somewhere in the region of Ray's left knee. "What about, you know, with the whole…" He trailed off, expression twisted as if someone had just stuck him with a knife. "You thing," he finally squeezed out. 

"Huh?" 

"I'm not repeating myself, Haircut. You know what I'm talking about." 

Ray didn't, at least not until he saw the reddening tips of Mick's ears. "Oh, that." He held himself very still, aware his own ears would be matching Mick's in short order. "No. I'm not...We weren't…" He couldn't say it so he swerved into something safe, something science. "It was too recent, I think. And nothing like as momentous as choosing to get on board a time ship. If we consider how memories are embedded ultimately by the retreading of neuron pathways until they become deep enough to hold there wasn't enough time. I mean, for him, anyway. It was a handful of times over a couple of months." 

"But for you it was years." 

"Yeah. Yeah, it was." Ray wanted this conversation to stop, had to resist the temptation to cut and run, but they were running out of options and the only way this was through. "I think it didn't...Whatever we were doing--sorry, Mick--I don't think it went deep enough for Snart to anchor there, not even if he'd been the one stuck in time instead of me." 

Ray expected Mick to laugh then, or point out there was nothing in Ray worth remembering, but instead Mick met his gaze and said, "If you see water like glass you gotta always check for currents." 

"I...thank you? I think?" Ray turned and stared at the equations he'd scrawled across the glass board. They weren't going to tell him anything new, but it turned out that oblique sympathy was harder to take than mockery. Who knew? 

"So what now?" 

Ray shook his head. "Honestly, I don't know. Gideon's been through every version of my tracking algorithm that she can think of, and nothing pops. We can't exactly go hang out every day of his life in the hope we'll find the last part. We could die of old age first, and then how would we explain away the whole ship-stealing saga to Rip?" 

"Screw Rip. Screw time." Mick banged his fist on the lab bench, Ray impulsively putting his hands out to save the minuscule parts he'd been working on from being scattered like a startled flock of birds. "We really can't do it with twelve parts?" Ray took a breath, ready to launch into the theory of quantum re-entanglement as it currently stood (in the world where he was inventing it as he went along), but one look at Mick's scowl stopped him in his tracks. Instead he went with a simple, "No." 

He flinched in advance, thinking Mick was either going to punch him or something else so hard that it broke and hit him anyway. But Mick just stood there, arms by his sides, jaw tight and nostrils flaring, breathing as if he'd run a half-marathon. If Ray hadn't been looking so closely, maybe he wouldn't have noticed the slight increase in blinking, eyes already red and tired from their recent adventures taking on a darker hue. He said nothing. 

"I'm sorry, Mick," repeated Ray. "I know he meant a lot to you." 

Mick blinked again. "He was family." His voice was toneless and dull and Ray was swamped with a sudden impulse to hug him. This was hard on the both of them, but he would be the most selfish kind of idiot if he didn't admit that Mick, with all their history, had it way worse. Ray might have been the one to see Snart naked, but Mick was...Wait a minute! 

"Oh!" he said, bouncing on his toes. "Mick, I think I have it." 

Instantly Mick was alert and sharp again. "What?" 

"The tattoo! The one on Snart's arm. I saw it when...it doesn't matter when. It's his sister's name and a date. Do you remember?" 

Mick's eyes widened and he slapped himself hard in the side of the head. "Of course. How could I forget?" 

"What does it mean?" 

Mick shook his head. "First time their pops hit Lisa. She was seven. Snart punched him in the face. Got a real beating for his trouble. You met Lewis. You know what he was. That was the day Snart figured out he had to be better. Thieving was one thing. You could be a gentleman and a thief, he always said. But beating up on your own kids? Beating up on a defenceless little girl? That was the wrong kind of villain, you know?" 

"So Leonard's shadow is forever locked in watching him fail to save his sister?" 

"Seems like." 

"That's pretty shitty." 

"Then let's go get him." 

Ray's stomach roiled queasily. They were so close. They were really going to do this. "And bring him home." 

"Yeah. And bring him home." 

***

Another house, smaller and dirtier than the last, paint peeling from the sidings, a swing seat hanging at a dubious angle on the porch. The tiny lawn was immaculate, though, perfect strips of dark and light, from the edge of the next property to the driveway that held a sparkling orange and black '72 Camaro. Ray guessed that was probably Leonard's domain. 

There was no way of knowing what time the incident would occur. Lewis could be a mean all day drunk, for all they knew, or he could play the doting father until the sun crept over the yardarm and he cracked the first beer. Mick and Ray walked up the driveway opposite and knocked. A small kid no higher than Ray's waist answered the door, and looked up at them with brown, distrustful eyes. 

"Go get your mama, kid," Mick said. "We're the FBI." 

They set up on the second floor at the front of the house, Ray extraordinarily grateful Gideon's covers had gotten them past both the suspicious kid and her equally suspicious mom. 

"I'm sorry for the mess," said the woman who owned the place, "But seeing I got no notice, you gonna have to take us as we come." 

Ray gave a brief glance around the room. It obviously belonged to the kid, single bed lined against the wall, bookshelf stuffed with dog-eared books and comics above it, toys all over the floor, some missing limbs or other parts. They'd seen some battles, for sure, Ray thought. 

"Sign of a creative mind," he said. "Apologies to your daughter for borrowing her space. We'll be out of here as soon as we can." 

The woman shrugged and gave a wry smile. "She's been begging for us to bake popovers ever since she read that damned book. I guess now is as good a time as any. Y'all need anything?" 

"No, thank you, ma'am," said Ray. "We're all good here." 

"Well, okay then. I'll leave you to your…" she waved a hand in the air, "... _business_." 

The door snicked closed behind her and Ray threw his bag on the bed, opening it. 

"Window," he said. 

Within seconds the tiny spy drone was flying across the street and Ray sat next to his open bag, tablet in hand, settling in for the long haul. 

By the time the situation seemed to be escalating, the sky was fading and Ray was more than ready to get out of there. He'd tried to distract Mick with comics and then, failing that, Legos, but he was a caged lion, carrying enough tension to string the Golden Gate bridge. 

On the screen, Lisa said, "But I have to take five dollars for the trip. Miss Suarez said we got till tomorrow. You promised I could go." 

"I told you, I ain't got it. Now go get me another beer." 

Ray looked up. "I think this is it." 

"Let's go." 

They moved quickly and quietly, easily visible to anyone who happened to be looking, but to the occupants of the house opposite, locked into an inevitable outcome, they might as well have been ghosts. Ray plastered himself to the side of the house, under the shadow of the roof overhang, and set his jaw. He passed Mick the silenced tablet, to give his hands something to do, and filled his own with the other equipment. 

"One tiny problem," he whispered as the yelling inside got louder. "I have no clue where Leonard is." 

Inside, a scream, short, high, and desperate. Then a sudden silence. On the tablet, a little girl on the floor, a beer bottle rolling side to side next to her, a dark stain on her skirt. Ray's grip tightened on his detector. Beside him, Mick growled. 

"Son of a-" He jerked forward, and Ray grabbed his elbow. 

"Mick, we can't stop time happening." 

"Yeah, I get that, but…" 

"I know." He let go of Mick's arm knowing there was no way of getting in the way of this unstoppable force, and besides, he didn't want to. There were no signs on the detector. What were they losing? Mick shoved the tablet back at Ray, who, only being in possession of two hands, fumbled it, managing to catch it between his knees before it hit the floor. By then, Mick was gone. Ray heard him hammering on the door. 

" _What?_

And then no more words, just a sickening crunch that told Ray that Lewis's nose was well and truly broken. He looked at the tablet where Lisa was on the phone, crouched down, making herself as small as possible. He touched a fingertip to her hair, a grim satisfaction settling low in his belly. 

"You broke by dose!" 

"Be grateful that's all, slimebag. Get back in there and clean yourself up." 

The door slammed again and Mick reappeared by Ray's side, a murderous scowl on his face. 

"Better?" 

"Not really." 

"I know." 

Mick slumped back against the wall. "We got any sign?" 

Ray looked down at the detector, a sick twist in his guts as he saw the flat line. He shook his head. What now? 

"Crap." 

"Understatement of the year," said Ray, desperately trying to keep his voice steady. 

Mick twisted his head towards him, expression transforming slowly to something entirely different, softer, like a rock eroded over time. "You'll figure it out. You're smart. This is one mission we ain't gonna screw sideways." 

"You'd make a good cheerleader, Mick, but-" 

But Ray got no further with that sentence because there was a screech and roar as a car took a corner at speed, and then another ear-splitting screech as brakes were slammed on and the car jerked to a halt by the front yard. A blur of a person leapt from the passenger seat and flew up the steps and into the house, the door banging on its hinges behind him. 

Ray stiffened, heart suddenly battering his ribs. He shoved the tablet back at Mick, sliding down the wall into a crouch, staring at the detector screen. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, _move_ ," he muttered, "What can you see, Mick?" 

"He's with Lisa. He's holding her. I think he's-" 

Whatever he was doing was lost to Ray as the waveforms went wild. With the ease and competence of long practise, Ray initiated the containment procedure, making sure all the readings were exactly what they needed to be before shutting off the intake valve. 

He looked up at Mick who stared down at him with expectancy. 

"Looks like-" Ray put down the equipment and held up a finger. "One second." He turned around, threw up in a neat pile, and turned back. "Sorry. No stopping that one." He nodded, completely unable to keep a straight face. "We did it!" 

"Well, hell, Raymond, let's go get him back." 

  
***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small amount of dialogue taken from S1 Flash/S1 DCs Legends of Tomorrow. Credit where it's due.


	5. Chapter 5

"Okay?"

Mick nodded. "Okay." 

"I'm…" 

"Yeah." Without moving his gaze, Mick took one hand from the glass and gripped Ray's forearm. Hard enough to bruise, but Ray didn't care. 

He'd checked the calculations a hundred times, had Gideon check them a thousand more. If this was going to work, then this was the time. All he had to do was throw the switch. Ray's finger twitched towards it, and then he froze. Mick. This could change everything, having Snart with them again, upsetting the careful equilibrium they'd found. For all Ray had taken beatings for Mick, for all Mick had saved his life, Leonard had always been their center of gravity: two planets orbiting one sun, separate and alone, in conjunction only once in a blue moon. Ray didn't want that, not any more. Sure, they'd started this adventure with one common goal, to bring back Leonard, but Mick was far too important to him now to let go. And it might be a risk to his ongoing health and welfare, but he couldn't in good conscience throw that switch until he'd at least tried to say something. 

He cleared his throat. "Mick," he said. "Whatever happens, I'm glad I had you on this journey with me. You're more than a teammate. You're a true friend." 

Mick let go, the imprints of his fingertips leaving behind five throbbing points that would bruise by tomorrow. "I don't have friends," he said, gruff as ever. 

Ray swallowed down the hurt. "Mmhmm," was all he could trust himself to say. 

"Only ever trusted one person my whole life. He was family and now he's atoms," Mick said, still not looking at Ray. "Gotta be something to that word, right?" 

And it was oblique and it was something and nothing and the swell in Mick's tone could be explained away by a thousand things, but Ray caught the implication and held tight to it. He nodded and managed to choke out, "Sure." And then he threw the switch. 

For an instant nothing happened, as blue light coursed through the enclosure and then a swirling fog of coalescing atoms, milk-white and shapeless at first, and then the beginnings of a body, impersonally generic, each element slowly taking form until it became part of a whole, unmistakably human, unmistakably _him_. 

Leonard's face, his eyes, if possible bluer than Ray remembered them, his cropped close hair, his shoulders and arms, the sweep of his chest and the swell of his thighs, his everything, all there, almost, but not quite, tangible. A pale shimmer like an aura, a halo, as each atom found its place. Ray tore his gaze away long enough to press another button, and electricity arced through each limb, flinging them back in a parody of passion, jaw slack and wide. 

"He's dying!" 

"No, no, he's not. It's...working." Ray could hardly make it to the end of the word. He shoved his curled fist in his mouth, biting down on it to stop himself either throwing up or bursting into tears. Neither was the look he wanted Leonard to see on his return, though he was well aware suave had dived out of the window after Russia. 

And then Leonard's head snapped forward, arms loosening, and his eyes seemed to focus right in on Ray for one split second before he crumpled to the floor without a sound. 

Ray and Mick stared at each other. "We did it," said Ray, hardly daring to raise his voice above a whisper. 

"Well, fuck." 

They looked back at the unconscious body on the floor. "We'd better get him to Medbay before this becomes an learning experience in managing expectations." 

"Just open the damn door." 

Ray opened the damn door. 

Mick pushed past him and scooped up Leonard in a fireman's hold. Ray couldn't help but notice how clean he looked, how fresh, how new. His skin was unmarked by scars or tattoos, and had the same soft sheen that Ray had seen in newborns. Resisting the temptation to reach out and touch, Ray hurried after Mick as he strode swiftly towards Medbay. 

"Gideon, fix him or I swear I'll find your soft center and stomp on your circuits." Mick swung Leonard back up, cradling him onto the bed with a tenderness Ray had never witnessed before, hovering over the still body like a protective mama bear watching over her cub. 

"If you will allow me room to work, Mr. Rory," said Gideon, sharp, yet kind. 

Mick grunted a reply and stepped back, shoulder to shoulder with Ray. 

Ray licked his lips. "I'm scared," he said, surrendering himself to the galloping of his heart and the numbness of his fingertips. No point in playing brave now, he wasn't anyone's focus of attention, not even his own. "We've done the hard part and now I'm scared. How dumb is that?" 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mick shake his head. "I keep thinking there'll be a price. Being scared seems like a plan." 

Ray's breath caught. He hadn't even thought of this in terms of cost. What if they'd brought him back wrong? Look what had happened to Thea after she'd been pulled from the Lazarus Pit. Sara, too. The difference was that Leonard hadn't technically died, and they weren't saving him by some supernatural magic that science couldn't explain. But still, he balled his fists just in case. 

"All scans indicate that Mr. Snart is in good health. In point of fact, comparisons to previous records demonstrate that he is in better condition than prior to his…" Gideon trailed off. Ray made a note to thank Rip for programming a degree of tact into her. 

"When's he gonna wake up?" 

"Though it would appear to have been unnatural in origin, Mr. Snart's current sleep evidences natural brain waves." 

"What does that mean?" 

"It means he'll wake up in his own time. You wanna watch him in shifts?" Ray had exactly no wish to move from the spot he was standing in, but he had to at least pretend to hit ten percent nonchalance. 

"I ain't-" 

What Mick wasn't planning to do was lost to the god of unspoken things, because it was at that precise second that Leonard's eyes flew open and he sat bolt upright, arm stretched out before him, hand curled as if holding something. 

"There are no strings on me," Leonard said and then yelled it louder, head jerking from side to side as he took in his surroundings. The look of triumph on his face was swept aside by something Ray could only read as a mixture of fear and what? Disappointment? 

"What the hell is happening?" he yelled, the panicked sweep of his gaze finally seeming to focus on the two men standing by his side. "Where are those bastards?" He made as if to swing his legs off the gurney, back in the world naked and still ready to fight. Ray bit the inside of his lip to stop himself blurting out anything stupid. 

"Hey, hey, you did it, it's okay." Mick clapped Leonard on the shoulder, stilling him. "We got the bastards. All of them. The Oculus is destroyed." 

Leonard stared at Mick, then down at himself. "And I'm alive and naked because?" 

"We brought you back." 

"Who did?" 

"We did." Mick jerked his thumb at Ray. "Haircut and me." 

"I was dead. Wasn't I supposed to be dead?" 

Ray, unable to keep quiet any longer, said, "You weren't. You were-" And how exactly was he supposed to explain this to a disoriented and obviously pissed Leonard Snart? He settled on, "Disassembled," and was rewarded by a softening of Leonard's eyebrows. 

"Ray figured it out. There were time loops and shadows. It's not important. All you need to know is we tracked you down and brought you back to where you belong." The "with us," was implied loudly enough for Ray to hear it. 

"I see." 

"You do?" 

"Not really. Maybe later the good doctor can explain it with small words and diagrams for the terminally time-lagged. For now…" Leonard covered Mick's hand that hadn't shifted from his shoulder. "It's good to see you, old friend." 

Mick shook his head. "You should never have-" 

"I should. And I did. Too late." 

And this was all great and all, Ray could appreciate. Mick deserved his moment, needed it, but just how long was Ray supposed to hold it together, really, with the sheer, solid presence of Leonard Snart right there in front of him? Naked, even! He was supposed to feel better now that Leonard was back, not tortured in a whole new way. His stomach protested with a violence that Ray considered entirely appropriate to the situation. If the choice were hug or vomit, how was that a choice at all? 

Taking a deep breath, Ray launched himself at Leonard, flinging his arms around him and hooking his chin over Leonard's shoulder. He accidentally knocked Mick's hand away in the process but couldn't find it in himself to care. Leonard's skin was cool against Ray's, and he could feel the pulse point in his neck throb against bone, vibrating its way into Leonard's cells, life calling to life. He wanted to cry. Instead, he squeezed harder. 

"Hey, hey," said Leonard. "I don't do touchy feely." 

And once Ray would have taken this at face value, have let it make him feel small, less than, but not today. "Yeah? Tell that to my lab bench." 

"Touché." Leonard raised his free arm and patted Ray arhythmically on the back. It wasn't the least awkward hug Ray had ever received, but he'd take it. 

Somewhere out of Ray's line of vision, Mick cleared his throat. "So. I'll...ah...I'll go plot that diversion we were talking about. You know. Elsewhere." 

"No, wait!" Ray used every part of his superhero willpower to drag himself away from Leonard. His feelings were only one set out of three, which put him in the minority, even if the other two were so emotionally constipated they might need some sort of surgical intervention. Bogarting the reunion would be a dick move. 

Mick stopped halfway to the door. "Okay?" 

"I was thinking we shouldn't go straight back." 

"We shouldn't?" 

Ray rubbed the back of his neck. "It's been a crazy few weeks, and we put Snart back together like puzzle pieces, and it all seems okay, but we should maybe keep an eye on him? At least give him some time to recover from the whole thing. It doesn't matter _when_ we go back, right? Just that we eventually _do_." 

Mick shrugged. Ray had long learned to read that as agreement. He turned to Len. "What do you think?" 

"I guess you want a _badge_ now, Eagle Scout." 

"Huh?" 

Leonard's smile verged on smirk, but was warm even so. "There's got to be a Bring Someone Back From the Dead But Not As a Zombie patch you could put in for." 

Ray listened for the ironic cast to Leonard's voice, but found nothing. He shook his head. 

"Missed opportunity if you ask me. Maybe I'll get Gideon to make you one." 

"I'll be-" 

But Ray never found out how Gideon felt about scouting paraphernalia, because his skin prickled with the heat of shame that raced like a spring tide over his body. He shook his head again. "I don't need a badge," he said, forcing himself to look Leonard right in the face, ready to watch the old familiar scorn settle into his eyes. "You were right. About me. You were right, I- Your sacrifice for us all, that was how to be a hero for the right reasons. Everything I've done, it's been for show, and I've messed up enough because of it. Saving you; that was for me, too. I wanted you back, so I got you. I don't want a badge. I don't deserve one." 

A hand landed on his shoulder. "Don't sell yourself short," said Mick, close to Ray's ear. "You're bigger than that." 

"Thanks, Mick." Ray kept his gaze on Leonard, who was as unreadable as ever. Slowly, Leonard blinked and then nodded, a small, barely perceptible nod that could be waved away as a neurological glitch, but there all the same. Ray's fists, curled without him even realizing he'd done it, relaxed. 

"Is anyone ever gonna get me some clothes? I'm feeling somewhat _underdressed_ for the occasion." 

"No problem, boss. You hungry?" 

"Why, yes I _am_. What did you have in mind?" 

"Beer." 

"You always were a gourmet, Mick." 

Ray watched the exchange, the smile lurking in the corner of his mouth threatening to swell into a full on grin despite a mild dizziness dragging across him each time he switched his gaze between the two of them. It was as if the world, off-kilter since the Oculus had blown and taken both the timestream and Leonard Snart with it, was righting itself bit by bit. Who could blame Ray if he felt a little seasick? 

***

Ray sat propped on his bunk pretending to read whatever was on his tablet. He'd lost count somewhere along the way as to how long they'd been on this rescue mission. How old was he now? Compared to when? Could he have wound back up in 2016 an old man? Did it matter? Every day, hour, second was worth it to have brought Leonard home. Savage was gone, time was their own to choose: back to a linear life or here, aboard the Waverider, with past, present and future all happening at once. 

Now they were done, it was time to think about his own future. What did he want? Take back Palmer Tech and use everything he'd learned on this wild ride to make things better faster? Stay with Rip and police the timeverse righting wrongs? Ray shook his head. Like it was even a choice. Even if they didn't get the whole crew back together, what they could do with just the four of them would be the stuff of legends, so suck that, history books. Ray stumbled mid-gloat. Just because you wanted something didn't mean you would get it. It was a lesson he had to keep on re-learning. Was this going to be another time? Would Leonard walk away, now he was back? It wasn't like Ray could blame him: being blasted into dissociated atoms would harsh anyone's buzz. 

Get him back to lose him all over again. Now there was a bitter pill. Ray swallowed hard, frowning. "C'mon, Dr. Palmer," he told himself. "It's a big universe, but at least he's in it. You did that. It's enough that you did that. Okay?" Give him a thousand or so more iterations and maybe it would be okay. Now, though...Ray's eyes slid closed, as a sudden wave of fatigue washed over him. 

They opened again when the door did, Ray's stomach flipping violently on instinct as Leonard slouched in, as casual as Ray had ever seen him in grey sweats and a black tee. For a moment, Ray flashed to the last time Leonard had come to his quarters, wanting him to fuck the pain away, and he stiffened. But this Leonard wasn't looking back to check his escape, hesitating, and his jaw was set to purposeful rather than mutinous. Ray allowed himself to relax, as much as he ever could around his own living embodiment of a Pushmi-Pullyu. 

Unsure of the best opening gambit, he stuck with a simple, "Hi." 

Leonard lifted his chin, saying nothing. He sauntered over to Ray's bed and sat down by his feet. 

Ray looked at him. Leonard looked back. It seemed to go on a long time, and Ray, never that comfortable with extended silences, nor hopeful that his face wasn't giving everything away no matter how hard he tried to school it, started to babble. "So, what were you thinking about-?" 

But he never got a chance to find out the end to the question he was apparently forming before Leonard put a finger over his lips. Ray got the message and stopped talking. 

"You saved my life," Leonard said, after another pause that went on a fraction of a second too long. 

Ray blinked, recalibrating. "I couldn't have done it without Mick." 

"Yeah, I know he helped, but it was you who figured it out, believed it was _possible_ , did the whole math and engineering thing." 

"Well, yeah." 

"So you saved my _life_. Check. Movie protocol dictates we have life-affirming sex now. You _good_ with that?" 

Ray's stomach made a bid for escape, and Ray swallowed, shoving it back down. He nodded, and added for good measure, "Okay." Single words. Single words were doable. 

"Okay," Leonard echoed in a tone Ray could only parse as approving. "I'm not gonna beat around the bush, Raymond, I want to _fuck_ you. I'll never be as clean and new as I am today and I want to feel _everything_. You understand?" 

The words went straight to Ray's cock as if each syllable added to the rush of blood swelling him, stripping him of his own coherence. Single words were too hard. "Mmhmm." 

"I'll take that as a yes, then." 

Pulling himself back together, because his practical side was nothing if not the soulmate of one of those gas station inflatable tubes, Ray said, "I don't think I have any lube handy." 

"Got _that_ covered. I stopped by your laboratory on the way over." Leonard dug into his pocket and held out the small tube of the industrial grade lubricant they'd used on their last encounter in Ray's lab. 

"Cool. Cool cool," Ray stammered, knowing he sounded the exact opposite and not caring. 

"You ever done this before?" 

"Let's just say Felicity introduced me to more things than Team Arrow." 

"Attagirl." 

There was another long silence where they stared at each other. Ray could feel his heart racing faster with every passing second and stumbled to fill the empty air. "Um, so...How do you wanna...I mean how should we…" 

Leonard rolled his eyes. "Shut up, Raymond." 

Ray would have told him that he was okay with obeying orders, but Leonard had already straddled him and effectively shut him up with his mouth. It took Ray a second to click into what was happening, but then he got it: he was kissing Leonard, sure, like he'd done several times before, but this was the first time he'd done it with the weight of so much history and knowledge and emotion. Time had telescoped Leonard's entire life into Ray's, and it was close to overwhelming him. Without waiting to weigh up the probability of being rejected by whatever means, he bracketed Leonard's head with his hands and tugged him in, kissing him with a desperate edge, as if every second could bring it all crashing down. 

To his relief, the only move Leonard made was to tug at the hem of Ray's tee. Now that was something Ray could get behind, and soon they were naked, Ray reaching out with a hesitant hand to touch Leonard's skin, warmer now, and as smooth and perfect as it looked. Leonard took Ray's wrist, dragging it down until Ray's fingertips grazed through rough curls of hair and closed around Leonard's cock, half hard and swelling fast under Ray's touch. 

"You're so…" He trailed off as Leonard came in for another kiss with a bruising intensity that sent Ray's pulse haywire and his stomach churning. 

Then Leonard pulled back and appraised Ray with a look that Ray considered way too cool for the situation, and said, "On your front." 

Oh, hey, Ray recognized that buzzing in his ears. "Um, okay." He settled onto his stomach, cheek resting on his folded hands and forced himself not to look back around, to put himself in Leonard's hands. 

"What do you like?" 

Now that, Ray wasn't expecting. He squirmed internally, not wanting to say, but liking being asked. Come on, Dr. Palmer, he told himself, no one reads minds. Just spit it out. He lifted his head and stared resolutely at the head wall of his bunk. 

"So, it's been my experience that it's better to go in fast because too much prep makes me start to think about the logistics, and then your dick could be Grond at the gates of Minas Tirith but it still wouldn't help. Door shut forever." 

"Don't kill the _mood_ , Gandalf. Knees up." 

Ray grinned, resisting the urge to ask if Leonard was referencing the original Tolkien or if he was going straight for the Peter Jackson adaptations. He shifted, tucking his knees to his chest. Behind him he heard the soft slick of lube being stroked onto flesh, and gulped. He barely had time to register Leonard's hands on him before the sharp shock of being penetrated took his breath away. 

"Stop, stop!" 

"Tell _that_ to the orcs," said Leonard, with his drawl turned up high, yet his only movement was his thumbs sweeping a line over Ray's hips. Ray zeroed in on this sensation, the gentle friction of it, to where he could feel the heat of Leonard's thighs, to the give of the pillow he squeezed between white fingers, to the pressure on his knees. He breathed, noticing the expansion of his ribs and how the breath seemed to ball in his sternum, deflating as he breathed out and bouncing back as he breathed in again, irrepressible, pain dissipating as he relaxed. And then he allowed himself to feel it, Leonard's cock inside him, and it was wildfire through his body, robbing him of oxygen, reducing everything to a single point. 

With difficulty he forced out a single word. "Move." 

"Whatever you say, Boy Scout." 

Leonard began to move, rocking Ray backwards and forwards, his cock, caught between thighs and torso, brushing his skin with delicious friction. Ray could feel himself getting harder again, lengthening along the crease of his thighs. Leonard's thrusts were slow and steady--deliberate--like he always was; always seeing all the angles, always with a plan. Ray trusted him, even though every stroke was like a water mirage, so close to perfect, but ultimately not enough. 

Forehead pressed into the pillow, Ray could hear his breathing quicken, building heat against the cage of his ribs and arms, trapping it and reflecting it back at him. Leonard's blunt fingernails scored a line down his back, and Ray gasped, pushing back against him. The hand dragged back up again, Leonard grabbing Ray's shoulders, angled so that his weight lay along the length of Ray's spine, curving into the space. For a brief moment, Ray felt the pressure of Leonard's forehead on his nape, and then it was gone, and with it Leonard put his hands against Ray's ass and pulled out. 

Ray started to protest but was cut short by a command. "Turn over." 

Again, Ray did as he was told, his limbs, uncoordinated with desire, narrowly missing colliding with Leonard in what could have been a situation-ending calamity. 

"Smooth," said Len, with the shadow of a smile. And then Ray didn't care about the near miss with Leonard's privates as Leonard swept Ray's legs over his shoulders and was back inside him in a second. 

He planted his hands either side of Ray's head and began to thrust, altering the angle until he found the one that made Ray's eyes fly wide open and emit a squeak that he didn't have time to be ashamed of as Leonard hit the same spot again and again. His mouth twisted in a familiar feral grin, obviously pleased by his discovery. It occurred to Ray that Len was like a scientist, finding repeatable results through methodical exploration. The thought made his heart thud with sudden violence, warmth tingling in fingertips that wanted to stroke against Leonard's face but didn't dare. 

And all the time Leonard thrust into him, almost unbearably slow. A jumble of commands and pleas racketed across Ray's thoughts, but he kept them inside, reluctant to let them out in case Leonard decided to stop instead. He should work on his trust issues the way he worked on his core, Ray figured, grateful for the latter at least. 

Sweet sparks skated across the surface of his skin, but somewhere deeper, somewhere unknowable, there was a pressure building, the promise of it stringing Ray tight with tension, balling his fists as if he were readying for a fight. And then Leonard lifted his head and looked straight into Ray's eyes. 

"Can you come from this or do you need to touch yourself?" 

"Oh...oh no, this...this is good...this is...I like this," Ray babbled, clenching his jaw to stop anything else falling out. 

"Of course. I _am_ the number one champion. Got a certificate and everything." 

Leonard looked down at Ray with an expression that was part amusement, part watchful, and part undefinable, and Ray did not care if that had been a badly landed dig at his Eagle Scouting; he was too far gone. It was not strange to Ray that time seemed to come unmoored; every minute a second, every second a minute. It was not strange to Ray that Leonard was the epicentre of it all, the man who destroyed the Oculus and became part of Time. 

Ray's abdominal muscles began to shake. Deep, deep in his body it began: an overwhelming, uncontrollable urge rising up through him. There was no stopping what was happening, Ray knew. All he had to do was enjoy it, relax and just let it happen. And then it was there, a warm rush through his cock as he came, convulsions riding his body in waves leaving him out of breath and trembling. For a moment he fought against the closing of his eyes, but lost, allowing the darkness to take over. It was as though every muscle in his body that had unknowingly been held in tension since Leonard was stripped across time had simultaneously relaxed. He hadn't felt this good in months. He started to smile. 

"Good boy, Raymond." 

Ray opened his eyes and stared up at Leonard, breathing hard, still shaking, his thoughts as scattered as Leonard's atoms had been. He knew he wore a goofy grin, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Leonard let Ray's legs fall, pushing them so they fell outwards. He slid down, gripping Ray's upper arms, and lowered his head, still fucking into Ray deep and slow. With the change in angle Ray got some relief, able to notice now the sensation of having Leonard inside him, the weight and fullness and burn of it. 

Ray put his hands on Len. He could only reach his sides, fingertips barely grazing the warm skin. He wanted to say, "Look at me. I want to see you. Don't you remember me telling you?", but despite everything they'd been through, this was still all too new and unknown. For as much as Ray's feelings seemed to have settled into being a constant, Leonard Snart was always the variable in any experiment. Ray did not want to have this one blow up in his face. Not here. Not now. 

And then Leonard looked up again, his cheeks flushed and lips parted, letting out short breaths that caught on the edge of his voice before falling. "This," he said, and his expression changed, eyelids fluttering and face drawing tight, gripping Ray's arms like iron shackles. He pushed tight against Ray and then stilled, his only movement a mild shake starting in his arms. A choked groan forced its way out, as though the tremors were breaking him apart. Ray wanted to make a joke about the earth moving, but it wasn't the time for flippancy. He wanted to say, "Holy crap, you could make anything beautiful. I love you," but it wasn't the time for that either. 

Instead he went for a heartfelt, "Thank you!" 

" _Thank_ you?" Leonard echoed, his expression and grip on Ray's arms easing. "You can't help yourself, can you?" 

"'Manners maketh the man.' Or so my mom always taught me." 

"Bully for her." Leonard rocked backwards, slipping out of Ray and kneeling between his legs. He leaned over and reached down to snag his sweatpants, taking a small packet out of the pocket. 

Ray raised his eyebrows. "Wet wipes? Now who's the Boy Scout?" 

Leonard ripped open the packet. "Baby wipes should be part of any good thief's clean up kit. That's _101_ level, Raymond." 

The familiar sarcastic tilt to his mouth was back in place, but to Ray's surprise, Leonard didn't take care of himself and leave Ray to it. Instead, he started to wipe down Ray's chest, muttering something about Ray's ancestral relationship to elephants. Ray, still fucked out and unable to muster up any energy for moving, let him get on with it. He'd decide if it was strange or soothing later. 

"Removing the evidence?" 

Leonard's hand paused for the briefest moment mid-wipe. "Sure. If you want to think about it that way." 

When he was finished, Leonard tossed the used wipes in Ray's trashcan. He sat on the edge of the bed, half-turned towards Ray who was considering his next move. Before he could figure it out, Leonard spoke. 

"I saw you, didn't I? I remember you...there. It's like trying to wedge two sets of memories together: how it always was and when you showed up. Did you always show up? Is that how it works? Were you always the guy outside the principal's office, the guy who let me cheat at cards?" 

Ray's eyes widened. He'd thought he'd gotten away with that clean; Leonard hadn't shown any sign of recognition when they'd first met, after all, and nothing since reassembly either. Maybe it wouldn't have been foremost on his mind, but... Oh, the _certificate_. Now it made sense. 

"Oh, yeah, I figured you out, shitty Texan drawl guy. You never tried to persuade me away from bad decisions. Why?" 

"Your life is your life. Besides, we had to know where to find you. We couldn't risk not knowing, or having you disappearing because your anchors changed or ceased to exist. How would Mick have known where to look? What if things changed so much we never met?" 

"Would that matter?" 

"Yes." Ray blurted out the word before stopping to think, immediately feeling more naked than he already was. He scrambled to cover himself. "For all of us. For Sara." Fuck, _fuck_ , why bring her into it? 

"Sara?" Len's face showed genuine puzzlement before a wash of understanding chased it away. 

The thing was, yes, Ray was a scientist and, yes, he understood the chemical storm that was taking place inside him, but when everything was boiled down to essentials, he was just some human who ignored all of that sound, peer-researched evidence in exchange for cartoon heart eyes. But if he loved Leonard--and as annoying as that was, it seemed like it was happening with or without Ray's consent--he needed to be open to the possibility of being hurt. Of Leonard choosing someone else, or simply not him. That was where the trust part of love came in; the part that had been next to impossible after Anna died. He'd loved Kendra, of course he had, but with Carter looming large in the background he'd never let his guard down completely. It made absolutely no sense to do it here--chances were high Leonard would hurt him, if not in the stab-you-in-the-back or shoot-you-in-the-face way--but a brand new start for Leonard could equal a brand new one for himself, right? Fuck it, he was going to hand Leonard the knife anyway. He could die a million ways every day in this job, and his potential boyfriend was only a handful of them. 

"Yeah. I mean, you like her, don't you? Didn't we already go through this?" 

"I have a lot of respect for her abilities, yes." 

"No, I mean you _like_ l- Oh my god, am I thirteen? You're attracted to her, aren't you?" 

"Well, I'm not made of _wood_." 

Ray avoided the obvious could-have-fooled-me joke and said, "No, you're a real boy." He _was_ real, and Ray couldn't string him and make him dance like his puppet, no matter how much he wanted everything that happened next to follow his own script, practised in the privacy of his own mind until he knew both parts by heart. He couldn't write Len's lines for him, or predict them, and that scared him like nothing else. So here he was, paralysed by the things he wasn't supposed to want or feel or say. 

"Maybe too real for Sara. Our preferences seem--how shall I say it?-- _misaligned_ at this particular time." Leonard stood as if he was just going to collect his things and leave. It was the usual M.O.: a return to the status quo. Ray had always hated extraneous Latin. Screw it, he thought. You invented new laws of physics to get this man back and you can't squeeze out a few words? 

He leapt to his feet and gripped Leonard's upper arms, holding him still whether he liked it or not. It still took Ray's breath away that Leonard was solid under his hands, was _here_. 

"Look," he said, "I love you. Whether you like it or not, and I'm guessing by the beginning of that snarl that it's the latter--no, no talking, not yet. Trust me. I don't like it either but there it is anyway. It's irrational and stupid and I can tell myself it's a dopamine and vasopressin all night party all I like but it doesn't make a scrap of difference. I love you and I forgive myself for that. And you don't have to say it back, you don't have to even feel it. You can turn up that drawl to 11 and do your darnedest to push me away and I won't care. You were dead, or at the very least _gone forever_ , and I hated every minute of it. Now I have you back and the least you can do is let me have my feelings." 

He tightened his grip, shaking Leonard a little, trying to jolt some expression into his face, at least one that he could read. 

"Okay?" he said, hating himself for not sticking to the plan and giving Leonard the chance to turn this monologue into a duet. But it was a compulsion. "Is it? Okay with you?" 

Leonard's mouth relaxed infinitesimally. If Ray hadn't passed Snart 101 way back he would have missed it. His eyes met Ray's. "Darndest?" he said, and smiled. 

Relief and happiness swept through Ray's body, stealing his equilibrium and leaving behind limbs that were no longer sure what piece of space-time they were occupying. He was grateful for the solidity of Leonard under his hands, possibly the only thing standing between Ray and a sudden date with the floor. Suddenly, he didn't know why he'd been fighting so hard for normal all his life. In everything else he'd wanted only extraordinary things; it seemed crazy now to have been so hidebound by the American Romantic Dream. Things could never be normal when Leonard Snart was any part of the equation. Chances were that both sides would always, and in the most unpredictable ways, remain unbalanced, and Ray was instantly and epically grateful for it. 

Before he could gather up a response that wasn't a grin that felt like it had taken over more facial real estate than Ray had deemed possible, the door opened and both heads swiveled towards it. 

"Oh, hey, Mick," said Ray letting go of Leonard and wondering if it was too late to use his hands as pants, and if so, exactly whose pants his hands should pretend to be. 

"Uh, maybe I should jet." Mick made to turn around. 

In unison Leonard and Ray called him back. "No, come in!" 

Mick paused and Ray read the, "You're sure?" his expression was trying to hide. He backed up, sat on his bunk and pulled the comforter over his lap. Leonard raised an eyebrow at him, settling at the other end of the bed, no comforter in sight. 

"Rip can wait a little longer," said Leonard. "Who's for a game of cards?" He reached down for his sweatpants and pulled a pack of cards from them. They looked used. Where they'd come from, Ray had no idea. Were his pockets a TARDIS? 

Mick came in far enough for the door to whoosh shut behind him. "If it's strip poker you already lost." 

"I'll deal," said Ray. 

"My cards, my deal." 

Ray glanced at Mick who shrugged as if to say, what's new? "Let the dead man deal," Mick said. 

"Gin? You know I can take you now, Mick." 

"Not if we play by Nose rules you can't." 

"You know you can't just make stuff up on the spot, right?" 

"Tell that to the laws of physics you broke." 

Ray tilted his head, considering. "Fair." 

Mick grinned: the real kind, not the feral I'll-bite-your-nose-off kind. It transformed his face, allowing the Mick Ray had come to know and care about to rise to the surface, for once unmasked. 

Leonard narrowed his eyes, looking between the two of them. "Oh, that's how it's gonna be, is it?" 

Ray reflected Mick's grin, and Mick dragged the chair from Ray's desk over, settling somewhere near the middle, propping his legs up on the bunk. 

"Okay," said Leonard. "Then that's how it is. All right ladies, got no pockets on me and neither has Raymond, so we're playing for _air_. Five card stud, aces high. No wild cards because we've had enough excitement for one day, don't you think?" 

"Speak for yourself," Mick grumbled, snatching up his cards as Leonard threw them his way, and scowling at them. 

There was no hope of bluffing. Ray felt the smile rise from his toes, streaming up through his whole body and spreading itself across his face. They were here, the three of them, alive and, for once, happy. Way back when they'd met on that rooftop he would never have dreamed how important this would be to him, these two heroes and criminals, how _necessary_ , and yet here they were. He reached out one leg and grazed Leonard's thigh. Without taking his eyes from his cards, Leonard absent-mindedly wrapped a hand around Ray's big toe. Ray glanced sideways at Mick, who rolled his eyes. 

"Man, everyone is going to go _insane_ when we get back." A niggling sensation that Ray only now realised had been at the back of his mind this whole time burst into fully wriggling life. "Speaking of everyone, did we ever figure out how we were creating that diversion?" 

"About that," said Mick. "I think I got a plan. Got any cupcakes?" 

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking it out to the end with me! I've had a lot of fun writing this series and I hope you've had some reading it too. Here's hoping the alternative timeline these guys find themselves in is a good one and no one breaks time. At least, you know, for a week. :D


End file.
